China warns countries against striking trade deals with US at its expense

BEIJING:  China on Monday issued a warning to countries making trade deals with the United States at its expense, vowing countermeasures against those who "appease" Washington in the blistering tariff war as its neighbours rush to secure favourable terms from the White House.

While the rest of the world has been hit with a blanket 10%tariff, China faces levies of up to 145% on many products. Beijing has responded with duties of 125% on US goods.

Parallel to Washington's full trade war against top economic rival China, a number of countries are now engaged in negotiations with the United States to lower tariffs.

The finance and trade ministers from South Korea — a major exporter to the United States — will hold high-level trade talks in Washington this week, Seoul said.

South Korean giants such as Samsung Electronics and automaker Hyundai stand to take a hefty hit if the White House goes ahead with its threatened levies.

Japan's prime minister Shigeru Ishiba said on Saturday that talks between Japan and the United States could be a "model for the world", after Toky's tariffs envoy Ryosei Akazawa visited Washington and met President Donald Trump last week.

"The fact that President Trump came out (to negotiate with Japan's envoy) [...] shows he sees talks with Japan as important," he told the country's parliament on Monday.

"Japan is their ally and the biggest investor and job creator in the US," Ishiba said.

Tokyo and Washington are due to hold more talks soon — but the Japanese prime minister also said that substance was more important than speed.

"They [the US] are not in a hurry and we think haste makes waste. At stake is how substantive (the negotiations) will be rather than how quickly they proceed," local media quoted Ishiba as saying.

Reports have suggested that as concessions for Trump, Japan might increase imports of US soybean and rice, or relax car safety standards.

But Ishiba said Monday that "be it cars or agricultural products, we will not do anything that will affect safety".

No peace with appeasement

US Vice President JD Vance also arrived in India on Monday for a four-day official visit as the two countries work to hash out a trade agreement.

That came the same day as Beijing warned nations not to seek a deal with the United States that compromised its interests.

"Appeasement will not bring peace, and compromise will not be respected," a spokesperson for China's commerce ministry said in a statement.

"To seek one's own temporary selfish interests at the expense of others' interests is to seek the skin of a tiger," Beijing said.

That approach, it warned, "will ultimately fail on both ends and harm others".

"China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China's interests," the spokesperson said.

"If such a situation occurs, China will never accept it and will resolutely take reciprocal countermeasures," they added.

Washington-Beijing talks

The China-US standoff has sparked global recession fears and rattled markets.

Trump said last week that the United States was in talks with China on tariffs, adding that he was confident the world's largest economies could make a deal to end the bitter trade war.

"Yeah, we're talking to China," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "I would say they have reached out a number of times."

"I think we're going to make a very good deal with China," he said at the White House.

China has vowed to fight the trade war "to the end" and has not confirmed specific talks with Washington, though it has called for dialogue.

Speaking alongside his Indonesian counterpart in Beijing on Monday, top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi called for "openness, inclusiveness, mutual benefit and win-win" and condemned "any form of unilateralism and trade protectionism".

"The abuse of tariffs will seriously damage the normal economic and trade exchanges among countries," he warned.

Beijing's commerce ministry also warned about an international order reverting to the "law of the jungle".

As part of Trump's trade war, the US government has also lowered the threshold at which parcels to individuals require formal entry processing by US Customs 1 to $800 from $2,500 as of April 5.

Trump's government has taken particular aim at China, and earlier this month Washington closed a duty-free exemption for small parcels from the country, a move that appeared to be designed to target low-cost online retailers like Temu and Shein.

In a statement in response, global shipping giant DHL said it will "temporarily" suspend the shipping of parcels worth more than $800 from businesses to individuals in the United States as of Monday.