The rest in the commercial escalation between Washington and Beijing is “obviously a positive step for the first two world economies,” said the communication director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Julie Kozack. “The reduction of customs tasks and the relaxation of tensions” between the two capitals “brings a positive note to our global growth forecasts,” he added at a press conference in Washington. However, uncertainty “remains at a high level” and will continue to weigh on the world economy, “said Julie Kozack.
The IMF head also pointed out that, with this fall in customs tariffs in the United States on incoming Chinese products, the effective rate applied to imports in the country “is now slightly above 14%.” This remains a much higher level than the existing one before Donald Trump’s return to the White House: at the end of December it was less than 3%.
Flip-Flop by Donald Trump
The US president announced a series of customs duties, aimed at certain countries and sectors of activities, before their “reciprocal” customs “customs tasks in early April, which applied a minimum rate of 10% in all incoming products and up to 50% depending on the country of origin. Given tensions in financial markets, Donald Trump finally stopped, for 90%, customs tasks beyond 10%.
If several countries have chosen to negotiate with the United States, China preferred to respond by imposing customs tariffs equivalent to their imports from the United States, causing an overload between Washington and Beijing, which brought customs duties on both sides of 145% and 125% respectively, beyond the previous surcharge.
Donald Trump finally agreed in mid -May to carry these customs tasks to 30%, again for a period of 90 days, the time to find a long -term agreement on trade between the first two economic powers, which the US president considers particularly unbalanced. For his part, Beijing agreed to bring his to 10% to US products.
Source: BFM TV
