Beijing: US President Donald Trump’s much-touted hefty tariffs on Chinese imports are yet to have a negative effect as the Communist nation’s trade surplus with America ballooned to a record high of $34.1 billion in September, data showed on Friday. Trump has been steadily hiking tariffs on Chinese exports to the US since June demanding Beijing to bring down the trade deficit amounting to $375 billion. The US escalated the trade war in September by imposing 10 per cent tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods being imported.
Trump threatened to impose tariffs on another $267 billion worth of products virtually covering almost all Chinese exports to the US totalling about $522.9 billion However, as the new US tariffs came into effect only on September 24, their impact is unlikely to be seen until later in the year or early in 2019, analysts said. Data showed a 10 per cent rise from the $31.05 billion surplus booked for August to US, indicating that Trump’s tariffs were yet to have the desired effect of narrowing the trade gap between the two countries. , the Hong-Kong based South China Morning Post reported. The continued demand for Chinese goods in US despite tariff escalation made the ruling Communist Party of China’s mouthpiece the People’s Daily taunt Trump in its editorial on Friday, saying that if the US wanted to narrow the trade gap it could sell four aircraft carriers to China. China’s exports in general went up 6.5 per cent year on year to 11.86 trillion yuan (about $1.72 trillion) in the first three quarters of 2018, surprising economists and analysts. The trade surplus was narrowed by 28.3 per cent to 1.44 trillion yuan in the first three quarters, state-run Xinhua news agency quoted the customs data as saying.
