While they haven't been imposed yet, China has released a list of $60 billion in additional retaliatory tariffs they plan to impose in response to Trump's latest actions.
Among many other things, the new list of tariffs released by China's Ministry of Commerce includes prized American exports such as liquidized-natural gas (LNG) and agricultural products.
“As the total value of goods under tariffs shoots up, China has little choice but to use LNG and others to top up the value,” said Lin Boqiang, professor on energy studies at China’s Xiamen University.
“The U.S. gas industry will be much harder hit by this as China imports only a small volume whereas U.S. suppliers see China as a major future market.” [...]
Other U.S. goods targeted by China in the latest list include semiconductors, some helicopters, small-to-mid-sized aircraft, condoms, iron ore, steel products, roasted coffee, sugar, foods containing chocolate, candies, and even car windscreens.
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"The implementation date of the taxation measures will be subject to the actions of the US, and China reserves the right to continue to introduce other countermeasures," China's release said, according to a translation. "Any unilateral threat or blackmail will only lead to intensification of conflicts and damage to the interests of all parties."
It's not much of a mystery what actions Trump will take next so this "major future market" is about to be closed.
It's true that China is close to running out of American exports to impose tariffs on so the next stop will be to cease importing American products entirely wherever applicable.
This demonstrates why we have a trade deficit to begin with, by the way. China is close to running out of American products to retaliate against because we don't export nearly as many things as they do. It's really that simple. And it's not going to change in the way Trump or his supporters think it will.
Our trade deficit will persist and even expand because our economies are aligned in fundamentally different ways. We have a consumer-based economy that imports far more than it exports, while China's economy exports far more ($2.2 trillion) than it imports ($1.2 trillion) each year.
That doesn't mean they're cheating us or we're taking advantage of them; it's just the way modern economies evolve. At some point in the not-too-distant future, the Chinese economy could also become a consumer-based economy like ours and someone else will make their products. Probably robots.