Karishma Vaswani, Columnist

China Won’t Blink First in Its Fight With the US

Beijing and Washington are entering uncharted territory in their global competition.

April 10, 2025 at 8:00 PM UTC

Updated on

April 11, 2025 at 1:12 AM UTC

Karishma Vaswani is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia politics with a special focus on China. Previously, she was the BBC's lead Asia presenter and worked for the BBC across Asia and South Asia for two decades.

China and the US are entering unchartered territory in their global competition.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

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In America’s escalating trade war with China, it won’t be Beijing that blinks first. President Xi Jinping can withstand way more economic and political pain than US President Donald Trump.

The response from the world’s second-largest economy to what it has called “blackmail” from Washington has been robust. It has said it will “fight to the end,” and hiked retaliatory tariffs to 84%. That was before Trump upped the ante again by imposing an effective 125% rate on Chinese goods while pausing duties on other countries for 90 days. The White House clarified Thursday that with a 20% levy put in place earlier this year over China’s role in fentanyl trafficking, the tariff rate is now 145%.