A shop owner holds a toy featuring US President Donald Trump at the Yiwu International Trade Market in Yiwu, China’s eastern Zhejiang province on 10 April 12025. Photo: ADEK BERRY / AFP
By Nectar Gan, CNN
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has said his nation is "not afraid," in his first public comment on the escalating trade war with the United States, as Beijing raised tariffs on US goods to 125 percent.
The tariff hike is the latest in a tit-for-tat battle between the world's two largest economies, after Trump raised tariffs on China to 145 percent. However, China has indicated it does not intend to go higher than 125 percent, saying it would be meaningless to engage in further escalation.
"The successive imposition of excessively high tariffs on China by the US has become nothing more than a numbers game, with no real economic significance," a spokesperson for China's Commerce Ministry said in a statement Friday.
"It merely further exposes the US practice of weaponising tariffs as a tool of bullying and coercion, turning itself into a joke," the spokesperson added.
The trade war between the world's two economic superpowers has tanked international markets and fuelled fears of a global recession.
"There are no winners in a trade war, and going against the world will only lead to self-isolation," Xi told Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Beijing on Friday, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
"For over 70 years, China's development has relied on self-reliance and hard work - never on handouts from others, and it is not afraid of any unjust suppression," Xi added.
The Chinese leader had remained publicly silent on the tariff war until now, but struck a defiant note in his first remarks - doubling down on messages of strength and resilience already broadcast by Chinese officials and state media.
"Regardless of how the external environment changes, China will remain confident, stay focused, and concentrate on managing its own affairs well," Xi was quoted as saying by CCTV.
As the rest of the world received a 90-day reprieve from Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs this week, the president moved to focus his trade war on China. Prior to announcing its latest tariff hike on Friday, Beijing said it would curb the import of Hollywood movies, after having hiked its own tariffs on the US to 84 percent and restricted some American firms from doing business in China or importing Chinese dual-use goods.
The ball is now back in America's court. While China says it "will not engage" in further tariff hikes, it has plenty of other options in its toolbox.
Influential Chinese commentators with links to Beijing have floated a series of possible countermeasures China could take, including suspending cooperation on fentanyl, banning the import of US poultry, limiting market access for services such as legal consultancies and investigating how much American companies earned from their intellectual property in China.
"If the US persists in substantively harming China's interests, China will resolutely take countermeasures and fight to the end," the Commerce Ministry spokesperson said Friday.
The unprecedented tariffs threaten to decimate trade between the world's two largest economies and further damage relations in other areas, with no obvious offramp in sight.
Xi Jinping. Photo: Li Xueren / Xinhua via AFP
Diplomatic offensive
CNN reported on Thursday that Trump is waiting for Xi to reach out - and has told his team that the US will not make the first move; but Beijing has repeatedly refused to arrange a leader-level phone call.
Rather than calling Trump to negotiate tariffs, Xi has instead launched a week of high-stakes diplomacy with other trade partners to push back against the escalating trade war.
His Friday meeting with Spain's Sanchez comes ahead of a multi-nation tour next week of Southeast Asia - a region heavily targeted by Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs before they were put on pause. Xi will visit Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia in his first foreign trip this year, according to China's Foreign Ministry.
Though such high-level meetings typically take weeks or even months to plan, the timing of the announcements - just days after the two economic superpowers imposed record-high tariffs on each other - underscores Xi's message that China is not backing down.
The Chinese leader is seeking to capitalize on the turmoil sparked by Trump's tariff whiplash to deepen ties with nations from Asia to Europe, casting China as a reliable partner and defender of global trade.
Sanchez, who is on his third visit to China in two years, is likely the first in a flurry of European leaders heading to Beijing amid the global economic uncertainty unleashed by Trump.
During their meeting, Xi told Sanchez that the world is undergoing accelerated changes unseen in a century.
"The more complex and volatile the international landscape becomes, the more important it is to maintain sound and stable relations between China and Spain," Xi said, vowing to work together in areas such as new energy, high-tech manufacturing and smart cities.
The Chinese leader also extended an olive branch to the European Union, calling it "an important pole in a multipolar world" and stressed that China has always "clearly supported" the group.
In a thinly-veiled jab at the US, Xi also called for China and the EU - which together account for more than one third of the world economy - to work together to defend international rules and order.
"China and the EU should fulfil their international responsibilities, jointly uphold the trend of economic globalization and the global trade environment, and work together to oppose unilateral bullying," Xi said, using a phrase that Beijing often used to criticize US tariffs.
'Shared future' with neighbours
Strengthening strategic ties with its neighbours is high on China's diplomatic agenda.
Vietnam and Cambodia were among the countries hardest hit by Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs - set at 46 and 49 percent respectively before the pause. Both countries have seen a surge in investment from Chinese and international businesses in recent years as they move supply chains out of China to take advantage of lower labour costs and hedge against US levies.
This week, Xi called for China to build a "shared future with neighbouring countries," while speaking at a high-profile Communist Party work conference on peripheral diplomacy.
An official statement from the two-day meeting called for China to "strengthen cooperation on industrial and supply chains" with nearby Asian nations.
China's relations with its neighbors were "at their best since modern times, while also entering a critical phase in which regional dynamics and global changes are becoming deeply interconnected," said the statement.
Beijing's relationships with countries in Europe and Asia have been increasingly tested in recent years, with Western-aligned nations following the US as it looked to limit China's access to semiconductor technology, for example. Beijing's close relations with Moscow have strained those ties further.
But since Trump's re-election, China has been eager to mend ties. In recent weeks, Chinese officials have talked to counterparts from South Korea, Japan and European countries in a bid to expand trade cooperation - and one up the US by winning over American allies and partners exasperated by the on-again-off-again trade war.
China's trade partners are likely to regard Beijing's overtures with scepticism.
Many of those nations are wary of being flooded with cheap Chinese goods. Beijing is also well known to have wielded access to its massive market as a weapon to coerce countries, often over political stances that sparked Beijing's ire.
- CNN
