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Trump threatens to hit China with 100 percent tariff starting in November

President Donald Trump on Friday said he will set a 100 percent tariff on Chinese goods starting on Nov. 1 and will “impose Export Controls on any and all critical software.”

Trump’s announcement on social media came after he shared a post earlier in the day threatening “massive” new tariffs on China and hinted he might cancel an upcoming summit meeting with President Xi Jinping in response to a move by Beijing earlier this week to restrict exports of rare earth magnets and raw materials.

“This was a real surprise, not only to me, but to all the Leaders of the Free World,” Trump said in a lengthy morning post on Truth Social. “I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so.”

The 100 percent duty, which Trump said could come “sooner, depending on any further actions or changes taken by China,” would re-establish what was effectively an embargo on Chinese goods in the spring. The two countries reached a detente after negotiations in late May, but kept tariffs at a level much higher than before. The U.S. currently imposes duties averaging about 55 percent on Chinese goods. That includes a 10 percent reciprocal rate, a 20 percent duty linked to U.S. concerns about fentanyl trafficking and additional tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term.

At a late afternoon White House event, Trump told reporters he still might go ahead with the meeting with Xi, which has been expected to take place in South Korea in late October, shortly before that country hosts the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders summit.

“I haven’t canceled, but I don’t know that we’re going to have it,” Trump said. “But I’m going to be there regardless, so I would assume we might have it.”

Trump also indicated he could drop his tariff threat if China rolls back its plan to impose new export controls.

“We’re going to have to see what happens. That’s why I made it November 1st,” Trump said.

In his first Truth Social post, Trump wrote that China had been sending letters to countries throughout the world informing them of plans to restrict exports “of each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths, and virtually anything else they can think of, even if it’s not manufactured in China.”

“Nobody has ever seen anything like this but, essentially, it would ‘clog’ the Markets, and make life difficult for virtually every Country in the World, especially for China. We have been contacted by other Countries who are extremely angry at this great Trade hostility, which came out of nowhere,” Trump wrote.

China should not be allowed to exert “monopoly” power over the exports of rare earth magnets, which are used in a number of high-tech, green energy and medical goods, Trump continued.

But if Beijing follows that course, “the U.S. has Monopoly positions also, much stronger and more far reaching than China’s,” he added.

During the late afternoon White House event, Trump said the United States could also restrict exports of aircraft parts and potentially other goods to China.

“We have many things [China needs], including a big thing is airplanes. But they have a lot of Boeing planes, and they need parts and lots of things like that,” Trump said.

Late last month, U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue said the two countries were in the final stages of negotiations for a “huge” sale of Boeing aircraft to China but that deal now looks in doubt.

The Chinese Embassy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s Truth Social post could mark the decisive end to a fragile trade truce that the U.S. and China have sustained since May. It also suggests that Beijing’s tightening grip on its critical mineral supply has derailed the White House strategy of reducing trade frictions in the run-up to the long-anticipated meeting between Trump and Xi in South Korea at the end of October.

“This week’s export-control expansion looks like a miscalculation — what Beijing sees as leverage, Washington views as betrayal,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Trump’s statement shows that even a deal-driven White House has limits, and China may have just crossed them.”

“But the risk is clear,” Singleton continued. “Mutually assured disruption is no longer a metaphor. Both sides are reaching for their economic weapons at the same time, and neither seems willing to back down.”

Earlier this year, Trump hiked his reciprocal tariff on China up to 125 percent, which Beijing matched in a series of tit-for-tat moves. That led to a meeting in May where the two sides agreed to scale back their tariffs for 90 days while talks continued. The two sides agreed in August to extend the reduced tariff rates for another 90 days, raising the stakes for the upcoming Xi-Trump meeting that has been expected to take place just before the annual APEC leaders meeting on Oct. 31 through Nov. 1.

Trump’s trade moves have already significantly reduced trade with China, which was the United States’ third-largest trading partner in 2024.

U.S. imports from the Asian heavyweight totaled $194 billion in the first seven months of 2025, compared with $239 billion in the same period last year. U.S. exports to China in January through July totaled $65 billion, compared with $82 billion in the same seven months in 2024.

U.S. exports of agricultural products, particularly soybeans, to China have been hit particularly hard, prompting the Trump administration to consider ways to provide billions of dollars of subsidy payments to farmers.

Phelim Kine contributed to this report.

LP Staff Writers

Writers at Lord’s Press come from a range of professional backgrounds, including history, diplomacy, heraldry, and public administration. Many publish anonymously or under initials—a practice that reflects the publication’s long-standing emphasis on discretion and editorial objectivity. While they bring expertise in European nobility, protocol, and archival research, their role is not to opine, but to document. Their focus remains on accuracy, historical integrity, and the preservation of events and individuals whose significance might otherwise go unrecorded.

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