BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China’s state media lashed out at U.S. President Donald Trump, accusing the White House of behaving like a “gang of hoodlums” as the world’s two biggest economies headed toward outright trade war on Friday.
The United States was set to impose tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports from 0401 GMT on Friday, as Trump warned it may ultimately target over $500 billion worth of Chinese goods, or roughly the total amount that the United States imported from China last year.
Beijing has vowed to respond immediately with an equal amount of tariffs of its own against U.S. autos, agricultural and other products.
A China central bank adviser said the planned U.S. import tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods - $34 billion plus a planned follow-on list worth $16 billion - will cut China’s economic growth by 0.2 percentage points, although the overall impact would be limited, the official Xinhua news agency reported Friday.
Chinese shares, which have been battered in the run-up to Friday’s tariff deadline, were down in choppy early trade, while the yuan currency also weakened.
“In effect, the Trump administration is behaving like a gang of hoodlums with its shakedown of other countries, particularly China,” the state-run China Daily newspaper said in an English language editorial on Friday.
“Its unruliness looks set to have a profoundly damaging impact on the
