China Says Trump Tariff Plan Puts WTO in `Unprecedented Danger’

China vowed to counter a U.S. proposal to charge extra tariffs on a list of its high-tech exports, and said the Trump administration’s actions are putting the World Trade Organization in “unprecedented danger.”

In a statement released Wednesday, China’s envoy to the WTO, Zhang Xiangchen, said that a proposal by the U.S. trade representative to recoup alleged losses due to intellectual-property abuse on around $50 billion of Chinese goods is “an intentional and gross violation of the WTO’s fundamental principles of non-discrimination and bound tariffs.”

Deputy ministers from China’s commerce and finance ministries are due to hold a press briefing at 4:30 p.m. Beijing time Wednesday.

In deciding which products to hit, U.S. officials on Tuesday identified 1,300 product lines that the U.S. Trade Representative’s office says benefit unfairly from government industrial policies, including Beijing’s Made in China 2025 plan to to dominate key strategic technologies.

China’s Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday said it would immediately appeal to the WTO and was “ready to take counter measures on U.S. products with the same intensity and scale.”

In targeting sectors that Beijing is openly trying to promote, the U.S. is signaling that its strategic aim in the current conflict is preventing China from gaining the global technological leadership that it wants. That has provoked anger in China, while analysts voiced doubt that the tariffs will succeed in changing Beijing’s behavior.

The tariffs may have only a minor economic impact, increasing levies by $12.5 billion on Chinese shipments to the U.S. that reached $506 billion last year, said Shane Oliver, the head of investment strategy at AMP Capital Investors Ltd. in Sydney. That’s an average tariff increase on overall imports from China of just 2.5 percent, he said.

“The main risk is that China’s response leads to a counter retaliation by the U.S. and a process of escalating tariffs that leads to a sharp slowing in trade between the two countries,” said Oliver.

Asian stocks were mixed as traders awaited a more detailed response from China to the latest escalation of trade tensions between the world’s two largest trading nations. The Shanghai Composite Index rose.

Industries including aerospace, information and communications technology, robotics and machinery are among those targeted by the USTR on Tuesday, which said it also chose products to minimize the impact on the U.S. economy and consumers.

In addition to advanced technologies such as communication satellites, the list includes things ranging from various types of steel to television components, medical devices, dishwashers, snow blowers and even flame throwers.

“The U.S. has this vicious intention to strangle China’s high-tech innovation,” said Wei Jianguo, former vice commerce minister and now an executive deputy director of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a government-linked think tank. “China won’t submit to the U.S. bully. Our countermeasures will hit their soft spots.”

The U.S. duties will likely provoke a strong response from China, said Carlos Gutierrez, U.S. commerce secretary under former President George W. Bush.

“Wars start with battles, and the battles have started,” Gutierrez, co-chair of the consulting firm Albright Stonebridge Group, said in an interview in Mexico City. Chinese President Xi Jinping “can’t afford to look like he’s getting pushed around.”

What our economists say ... “The U.S. proposal on tariffs aims to hit China’s industrial ambitions without hurting U.S. consumers,” said Tom Orlik, chief Asia economist at Bloomberg Economics in Beijing. “On both objectives, it will likely fall short. In sum – we think the macro impact will be limited and the strategic objectives difficult to achieve.”

The release of the list by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer leads into a roughly 60-day period when the public can provide feedback and the government holds hearings on the tariffs. The 25 percent tariffs come on top of any existing levies.

China’s Made in China 2025 plan was announced in 2015, and highlighted 10 sectors for support on the way to China becoming an advanced manufacturing power, from information technology, to robotics and aerospace. In addition, China has a separate development strategy for artificial intelligence, published in 2017.

USTR said the public can submit written comments on the tariffs until May 11, and it will hold a public hearing on them on May 15 in Washington.