American shoppers set to pay higher price than Chinese for trade war
US consumers face higher costs for goods such as refrigerators and cutlery, but in China the items affected include false beards and riding crops
The trade war between the world’s two economic titans is about to make dozens of household goods more expensive for US shoppers, but thousands of miles away in China, consumers look set to escape much of the pain.
President Donald Trump is said to be intending to pull the trigger on tariffs targeting US$200 billion of Chinese imports once a deadline for public input closes Thursday.
Such a move – his biggest salvo in the fight with China so far – hits at the heart of the American household, risking price increases for everyday items from refrigerators and freezers to cutlery and towels.
Beijing has vowed to retaliate, but the targets it has selected and the fact that China’s imports of US-made goods are dwarfed by what it exports, means the world’s biggest consumer market will be largely shielded from the spat.
The country’s retaliatory tariffs on US$60 billion of imports from the US focus on manufacturing components, chemicals and medical instruments. And many of the ready-to-buy American goods that will be subject to duties by the Chinese government are hardly mass-market: yachts, riding crops and false beards.