As the US-China Tariffs are in Full Effect, What’s Next and Who’s Hurt

Fadi Thomas AlAji
2 min readJul 6, 2018
Picture from cnn.com

President Trump’s tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports has taken effect. This lead to China saying that it will be forced to retaliate but no new tariffs have been enforced or increased yet.

On Friday July 6 at 12:01, new US tariffs were in full effect on $34 billion imports from China, with $16 billion additional tariffs that could be imposed in the next two weeks as President Trump has said. The $16 billion additional tariffs will probably be in retaliation of the Chinese response. The new tariffs are imposed on Chinese goods ranging from airplane parts to farming equipments. At the time the tariffs were imposed and announced, it was around noon in China. The Chinese government has already said that it will not back down and that it will increase tariffs on a range of imports like pork and soybean. The Mexican government is also considering tariffs on US pork which will highly affect US pork producers. President Trump has threatened that the tariffs against China could total around $550 billion, which is about eleven times what the US has officialy approved.In the midst of all of this, a range of economies and business channels are being effected. Global supply chain is at record high risks. The stock market in China has taken a beating for the past few weeks and is likely entering a bear market. On the other hand, the US stock market is up slightly more than 2% for the year. American companies like Apple and General Motors that operate from China can also be affected with increased regulations and audits if the Chinese government selects to play that hand, which they did back in 2013. Emerging markets will also be affected because of shrinking global trade opportunities. In spite of all those affected, the most important loser in this war is the consumer.

Retaliation from both sides are escalating the situation and since no one seems to be backing down, I can’t see how or when this will end, but it is having a huge effect on global growth.

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Fadi Thomas AlAji

Investment Banker, “The truth is permanent, everything else will fall by the way side.” Reach me at fadi.aji7@gmail.com