Trump Says China Won't Retaliate for US Tariff Threat

President Donald Trump said he doesn’t think China will retaliate for the U.S.’s planned 10 percent tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods scheduled to take effect in December, Trump told reporters Aug. 15.

Trump said the U.S. and China still plan to meet in September and are having “very productive talks” over the phone. “I don’t think they’ll retaliate,” Trump said, adding that “we’re talking to them and they’re offering things that are very good.”

But Trump also said that if China did retaliate, the U.S. has the “ultimate form of retaliation” and that “they’d have very few jobs left in China, because we’d be able to step it up.”

Trump’s comments came hours after China announced it would take “necessary countermeasures” if the U.S. follows through on its threat of an additional 10 percent tariff, saying the threat “seriously violated the consensus” the two sides has reached in recent talks (see 1908150024).