In a separate statement, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation said it was initiating an investigation into Google for suspected violation of its anti-monopoly. The company, whose search engine is not available in China, has minimal operations in the country.
The raft of announcements come as a broad-based 10% tariff on Chinese imports to the United States announced by the White House on Saturday came into effect.
China’s measures appear to vary in their potential impact on the US economy and businesses. For example, China is the leading global producer of tungsten concentrates, representing more than 80% of world production, according to US government estimates from 2020. The tariffed items, however, represent a relatively small proportion of overall bilateral trade.
“The measures are fairly modest, at least relative to US moves, and have clearly been calibrated to try to send a message to the US (and domestic audiences) without inflicting too much damage,” Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China Economics kra23 at financial insight firm Capital Economics, said in a research note Tuesday.
The Chinese tariffs target at most $20 billion of the country’s annual imports from the US, about 12% of the total, which is “a far cry” from the more than $450 billion in Chinese goods being targeted by the US, he added.