Well, China has “responded” to Trump’s latest efforts to up the ante in the ongoing (and increasingly absurd) trade spat and their response was – terse?
- China to Take Immediate Retaliation if U.S. Releases $100B List
- China Has Very Detailed Retaliatory Measures
There you go. That was apparently it.
The more “detailed” version from Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng reads as follows:
[China] will retaliate immediately, intensively, without any hesitation if the U.S. releases a new list of tariffs on $100b [in] additional imports.
Gao also seemed to suggest discussions have broken down. “For a period of time, financial and economic officials from both sides haven’t had any negotiations on any economic or trade issues,” he added.
There you have it, folks. “Immediate, intense” retaliation and in case you aren’t sure what “immediate” means, Beijing reminds you that translates to: “without any hesitation.”
As noted earlier, considering China can’t really retaliate “proportionately”, one wonders what such “detailed measures” would entail.
Maybe time to start betting on some yuan depreciation.
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Reduce or cease purchases of treasuries. I am sure an increase in treasury yields will offset that loss of market, but at what a cost. In the mean time the value of US treasuries held by China increases in value.
If anything that comes out of China is remotely accurate then a depreciation is inevitable sometime. That’s a big if though. This country seems to have a culture of faking everything.
https://www.ft.com/content/8ccdd720-4c93-11e5-9b5d-89a026fda5c9 Fake Goldman Sachs
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1853159/fake-iwatches-salt-marijuana-and-starbucks-look-chinas
The list goes on and on…, fake lion at zoo, fake baby formula with melamine, fake singing at olympics. I would be very surprised if any data out of that country is real. The numbers are consistently too good to be real
https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/07/chinese-economy
Pretty sure anyone with any good sense knows this but it needs to be repeated.