Donald Trump has asked his trade tsar to look at more than doubling proposed tariffs on some $200bn in annual imports from China, ratcheting up pressure on Beijing in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
Senior administration officials told reporters on Wednesday that the president had asked US trade representative Robert Lighthizer to consider increasing the proposed tariffs to 25 per cent from the 10 per cent announced last month.
The proposed tariffs could not take effect before September and the administration, which is facing a growing domestic backlash against its trade wars, stressed that they would still be subject to a public comment period and that no decision on whether to go ahead with them had been made.