China plans to turn Trump tariff ‘crisis into opportunity’

As countries around the world scramble to negotiate concessions from US President Donald Trump’s escalation last week of a global trade war, China has taken a different tack.

As countries around the world scramble to negotiate concessions from US President Donald Trump’s escalation last week of a global trade war, China has taken a different tack. Within 48 hours of Trump’s market-hammering tariffs announcement, the world’s second-largest economy swiftly retaliated with its own punitive measures on US goods and firms. And now it’s sending out a clear message: China is well prepared to weather a trade war – and come out stronger on the other side. That message was telegraphed to China’s domestic audience and foreign countries alike in a flurry of state media coverage and government statements over the weekend following Trump’s epic assault on the global trading system. “US tariffs will have an impact (on China), but ‘the sky won’t fall,’” a commentary in the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily said Sunday. “Since the US initiated the (first) trade war in 2017 – no matter how the US fights or presses – we have continued to develop and progress, demonstrating resilience – ‘the more pressure we get, the stronger we become,’” read the commentary, which was also on the front page of the paper’s Monday edition.