Chi­na coun­tered Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s across-the-board tar­iffs on Chi­nese prod­ucts with tar­iffs on se­lect U.S. im­ports Tues­day, as well as an­nounc­ing an an­titrust in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Google and oth­er trade mea­sures.

U.S. tar­iffs on prod­ucts from Cana­da and Mex­i­co were al­so set to go in­to ef­fect Tues­day be­fore Trump agreed to a 30-day pause as the two coun­tries act­ed to ap­pease his con­cerns about bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and drug traf­fick­ing. Trump planned to talk with Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping in the next few days.

The Chi­nese re­sponse was “mea­sured,” said John Gong, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics in Bei­jing. “I don’t think they want the trade war es­ca­lat­ing,” he said. “And they see this ex­am­ple from Cana­da and Mex­i­co and prob­a­bly they are hop­ing for the same thing.”

This isn’t the first round of tit-for-tat ac­tions be­tween the two coun­tries. Chi­na and the U.S. had en­gaged in a trade war in 2018 when Trump raised tar­iffs on Chi­nese goods and Chi­na re­spond­ed in kind.

This time, an­a­lysts said, Chi­na is much bet­ter pre­pared to counter, with the gov­ern­ment an­nounc­ing a slew of mea­sures that cut across dif­fer­ent sec­tors of the econ­o­my, from en­er­gy to in­di­vid­ual U.S. com­pa­nies.

Counter tar­iffs

Chi­na said it would im­ple­ment a 15% tar­iff on coal and liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas prod­ucts as well as a 10% tar­iff on crude oil, agri­cul­tur­al ma­chin­ery and large-en­gine cars im­port­ed from the U.S. The tar­iffs would take ef­fect next Mon­day.

“The U.S.’s uni­lat­er­al tar­iff in­crease se­ri­ous­ly vi­o­lates the rules of the World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion,” the State Coun­cil Tar­iff Com­mis­sion said in a state­ment. “It is not on­ly un­help­ful in solv­ing its own prob­lems, but al­so dam­ages nor­mal eco­nom­ic and trade co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Chi­na and the U.S.”

The im­pact on U.S. ex­ports may be lim­it­ed. Though the U.S. is the biggest ex­porter of liq­uid nat­ur­al gas glob­al­ly, it does not ex­port much to Chi­na. In 2023, the U.S. ex­port­ed 173,247 mil­lion cu­bic feet of LNG to Chi­na, rep­re­sent­ing about 2.3% of to­tal nat­ur­al gas ex­ports, ac­cord­ing to the U.S. En­er­gy In­for­ma­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Chi­na im­port­ed on­ly about 700,000 cars over­all last year, and the lead­ing im­porters are from Eu­rope and Japan, said Bill Rus­so, the founder of the Au­to­mo­bil­i­ty Lim­it­ed con­sul­tan­cy in Shang­hai.

Fur­ther ex­port con­trols on crit­i­cal min­er­als

Chi­na an­nounced ex­port con­trols on sev­er­al el­e­ments crit­i­cal to the pro­duc­tion of mod­ern high-tech prod­ucts.

They in­clude tung­sten, tel­luri­um, bis­muth, molyb­de­num and in­di­um, many of which are des­ig­nat­ed as crit­i­cal min­er­als by the U.S. Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey, mean­ing they are es­sen­tial to U.S. eco­nom­ic or na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty that have sup­ply chains vul­ner­a­ble to dis­rup­tion.

The ex­port con­trols are in ad­di­tion to ones Chi­na placed in De­cem­ber on key el­e­ments such as gal­li­um.

“They have a much more de­vel­oped ex­port con­trol regime,” Philip Luck, an econ­o­mist at the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies and for­mer State De­part­ment of­fi­cial, said at a pan­el dis­cus­sion on Mon­day.

“We de­pend on them for a lot of crit­i­cal min­er­als: gal­li­um, ger­ma­ni­um, graphite, a host of oth­ers,” he said. “So … they could put some sig­nif­i­cant harm on our econ­o­my.”

The re­sponse from Chi­na ap­pears cal­cu­lat­ed and mea­sured, said Stephen Dover, chief mar­ket strate­gist and head of the Franklin Tem­ple­ton In­sti­tute, a fi­nan­cial re­search firm. How­ev­er, he said, the world is brac­ing for fur­ther im­pact.

“A risk is that this is the be­gin­ning of a tit-for-tat trade war, which could re­sult in low­er GDP growth every­where, high­er U.S. in­fla­tion, a stronger dol­lar and up­side pres­sure on U.S. in­ter­est rates,” Dover said.

US com­pa­nies al­so im­pact­ed

In ad­di­tion, Chi­na’s State Ad­min­is­tra­tion for Mar­ket Reg­u­la­tion said Tues­day it is in­ves­ti­gat­ing Google on sus­pi­cion of vi­o­lat­ing an­titrust laws. The an­nounce­ment did not men­tion the tar­iffs but came just min­utes af­ter Trump’s 10% tar­iffs on Chi­na were to take ef­fect.

It is un­clear how the probe will af­fect Google’s op­er­a­tions. The com­pa­ny has long faced com­plaints from Chi­nese smart­phone mak­ers over its busi­ness prac­tices sur­round­ing the An­droid op­er­at­ing sys­tem, Gong said.

Oth­er­wise, Google has a lim­it­ed pres­ence in Chi­na, and its search en­gine is blocked in the coun­try like most oth­er West­ern plat­forms. Google ex­it­ed the Chi­nese mar­ket in 2010 af­ter re­fus­ing to com­ply with cen­sor­ship re­quests from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment and fol­low­ing a se­ries of cy­ber­at­tacks on the com­pa­ny.

Google did not im­me­di­ate­ly com­ment.

The Com­merce Min­istry al­so placed two Amer­i­can com­pa­nies on an un­re­li­able en­ti­ties list: PVH Group, which owns Calvin Klein and Tom­my Hil­figer, and Il­lu­mi­na, which is a biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny with of­fices in Chi­na. The list­ing could bar them from en­gag­ing in Chi­na-re­lat­ed im­port or ex­port ac­tiv­i­ties and from mak­ing new in­vest­ments in the coun­try.

Bei­jing be­gan in­ves­ti­gat­ing PVH Group in Sep­tem­ber last year over “im­prop­er Xin­jiang-re­lat­ed be­hav­iour” af­ter the com­pa­ny al­leged­ly boy­cotted the use of Xin­jiang cot­ton.

Putting these U.S. com­pa­nies on the un­re­li­able en­ti­ties list is “alarm­ing” be­cause it shows that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is us­ing the list to pres­sure U.S. com­pa­nies to take a side, said George Chen, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor for The Asia Group, a Wash­ing­ton D.C.-head­quar­tered busi­ness pol­i­cy con­sul­tan­cy.

“It’s al­most like telling Amer­i­can com­pa­nies, what your gov­ern­ment is do­ing is bad, you need to tell the gov­ern­ment that if you add more tar­iffs or hurt U.S.-Chi­na re­la­tions at the end of the day it’ll back­fire on Amer­i­can com­pa­nies,” Chen said.

Wu re­port­ed from Bangkok. AP writ­ers Zen Soo in Hong Kong and Christo­pher Bodeen in Taipei, Tai­wan, con­tributed to this re­port.

BEI­JING (AP) —