President Trump’s 10 percent tariff on all Chinese products went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, the result of an executive order issued over the weekend aimed at pressuring Beijing to crack down on fentanyl shipments into the United States.
The tariffs, which Mr. Trump said on Monday were an “opening salvo,” come on top of levies that the president imposed during his first term. Many Chinese products already face a 10 or 25 percent tariff and the move will add a 10 percent tariff to more than $400 billion of goods Americans purchase from China each year.
Mr. Trump had been planning to hit America’s three largest trading partners, Canada, Mexico and China, with tariffs of varying degrees. But after days of frantic negotiations, Mr. Trump agreed to pause tariffs on Mexico and Canada for 30 days after the Canadian and Mexican governments promised to step up their oversight of fentanyl and the border.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said he planned to speak with Chinese leader Xi Jinping within the next 24 hours, but it was not clear when the phone call would take place. A White House official confirmed Monday afternoon that the tariffs with China were still set to take effect at midnight.
Mr. Trump’s executive order, signed on Saturday, also ended a popular workaround that many Chinese companies have used to send goods to the United States without paying the tariffs that the president imposed in 2018. The provision, known as de minimis, allowed popular e-commerce companies like Shein and Temu to send billions of dollars of products from Chinese factories directly to American consumers tariff free.
The deal that Mr. Trump made with Canada and Mexico Monday brought the United States back from the brink of a potentially devastating trade war with two of its closest allies. But it did not preclude the threat of similar conflicts happening later.
On Monday, Mr. Trump made clear that he would deploy tariffs liberally to get other governments to give him what he wants.
“I don’t want to use names, but tariffs are very powerful, both economically and in getting everything else you want,” Mr. Trump said during remarks in the Oval Office. “When you’re the pot of gold, the tariffs are very good, they’re very powerful and they’re going to make our country very rich again.”
Mr. Trump has accused China of failing to do enough to stop the export of fentanyl and the chemicals that are used to make it. In an executive order issued Saturday, Mr. Trump said that shipments of synthetic opioids had ravaged U.S. communities, put a severe strain on the U.S. health care system and were the leading cause of death for people aged 18 to 45 in the United States.
China criticized the Mr. Trump’s executive order over the weekend but did not immediately promise to retaliate with its own trade measures. Instead it said it was considering taking “countermeasures” and would file a case against the United States at the World Trade Organization.
It’s not clear what additional steps the Chinese government has recently taken, if any, beyond its previous law enforcement collaboration with the United States on the fentanyl trade. Mr. Trump discussed fentanyl with Mr. Xi in a phone call during his first week in office.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, China introduced a ban on fentanyl and began coordinating efforts with the United States to catch traffickers under pressure from Mr. Trump. And in 2023, Mr. Xi and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. agreed to a series of bilateral talks on narcotics after they met in Woodside, Calif.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy had said that China firmly opposed tariffs and that any differences or frictions should be resolved through dialogue. “There is no winner in a trade war or tariff war, which serves the interests of neither side nor the world,” the spokesman said.
Mr. Trump waged an intense trade war with China during his first term, after initiating a trade case that found that the country had unfairly infringed on U.S. intellectual property. He ratcheted up tariffs on China and ultimately applied tariffs to about 60 percent of the country’s exports to the United States. In January 2020, he signed a trade deal with Chinese leaders, but the tariffs stayed in place. Mr. Biden kept those levies in place and added additional tariffs on electric vehicles, solar cells, semiconductors and advanced batteries.
