Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s remarks on U.S. announcement of trade measures against China

China expressed its firm opposition after the Office of U.S. Trade Representative published a list of Chinese goods subject to additional tariffs.

“I have to stress that China and the U.S. have conducted several rounds of negotiations in an attempt to resolve our differences and achieve win-win results,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said.

“It is deeply regrettable that in disregard of the consensus between the two sides, the U.S. has demonstrated flip-flops and ignited a trade war. This move not only hurts bilateral interests, but also undermines world trade order. The Chinese side firmly opposes that,” the spokesperson said.

“China does not want a trade war. However, confronted by such short-sighted act that hurts both the U.S. itself and others, China has no choice but to fight back forcefully, to firmly safeguard the interests of the nation and its people and uphold economic globalization and the multilateral trading system.

“We will immediately take tariff measures of the same scale and intensity. All economic and trade outcomes of previous talks will now lose effect.

“Waging a trade war does not conform to global interests nowadays. We call on all countries to take collective actions to firmly curb such outdated and regressive move and steadfastly safeguard the common interests of the mankind,” Lu said.