Chinese exports surge ahead of Trump’s 145% tariff on goods

Chinese exports surged in March ahead of Donald Trump’s imposition of a 145 per cent tariff on Chinese goods, Beijing said on Monday.

Exports rose 12.4 per cent compared to March last year, according to official data, a bigger than expected jump that compared to a 2.3 per cent increase in the first two months of the year.

The announcement came hours after the White House said the exclusion of smartphones and computers from “reciprocal” tariffs announced on Friday was only a temporary reprieve.

US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said on Sunday that the exempted electronics products would face new tariffs, along with semiconductors, within the next two months

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The US customs and border protection agency on Friday published a list of 20 product categories, including smartphones, laptops and semiconductor devices that would be exempted from the tariff.

This meant that such products from China would be subject to a tariff of 20 per cent instead of 145 per cent.

Last year, China supplied more than two thirds of the smartphones, laptops and PC monitors imported into the US and the exempted products account for almost 25 per cent of Chinese exports to the country.

Beijing noted that this was the second change Trump had made to his tariff regime after he postponed “reciprocal tariffs” on most countries last week.

“This can be seen as a small step toward correcting its erroneous unilateral practice of ‘reciprocal tariffs’,” China’s commerce ministry said.

Mr Trump blamed the media for giving a misleading impression of Friday’s announcement, posting on his Truth Social website that nobody is getting off the hook of tariffs.

“We are taking a look at semiconductors and the whole electronics supply chain in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations,” he said.

“What has been exposed is that we need to make products in the United States, and that we will not be held hostage by other countries, especially hostile trading nations like China.”

Applying a separate, national security tariff to Chinese electronics imports could still represent a reprieve for companies like Apple and Dell if it is set at 25 per cent, as some speculation in Washington suggests.

Mr Trump and Mr Lutnick made clear that such products were moving into a separate tariff “bucket” so they would not face the 125 per cent “reciprocal tariff” imposed on other Chinese imports, although they would still be subject to a separate, 20 per cent import levy Mr Trump imposed on China earlier this year.

China’s President Xi Jinping started a three-country tour of south-east Asia on Monday with a two-day state visit to Vietnam before he moves on to Malaysia and Cambodia. Writing in Vietnam’s Nhan Dan newspaper on Monday, he called for closer co-operation between China and Vietnam on industry and supply chains and in strengthening the multilateral trading system.

“There are no winners in trade wars and tariff wars, and protectionism has no way out,” he said.

“We must firmly safeguard the multilateral trading system, maintain the stability of the global industrial and supply chains, and maintain the international environment for open cooperation.