The tariff war between the USA and China is back, in an even more pugnacious manner: from 14 October Beijing will impose docking tariffs of 400 yuan per net ton on US ships or those attributable to American interests, replicating the measures introduced by Washington against Chinese merchant ships.
Trump, for his part, attacks the Chinese by speaking of hostility and threatens a resurgence in tariffs.
Trump against China
Donald Trump on Truth Social accused Beijing of “hostile acts” and of wanting to “impose export controls on every single element of production that has to do with rare earths”. The American president has already announced new duties: 100% on drugs, 50% on furniture, 25% on trucks.
The Chinese measure, apparently technical, is instead highly political: it affects not only ships flying the US flag, but also those owned or partially controlled by American entities (over 25%). Beijing thus extends the scope to broaden the symbolic and practical effect of the countermeasures.
The US-China trade war is hampering the stock market
Analysts estimate the initial impact will be modest but significant: increased costs for American consumers, reduced margins for shippers and a decline in exports to the United States. China, with a 53% share of the world’s shipbuilding industry, has much broader retaliatory tools than the Americans, who represent only a fraction of the sector. In other words, Beijing can strike with increasing force, while Washington has limited industrial leverage.
Trump’s reaction was immediate and furious. “I am considering a massive tariff increase on Chinese products,” he wrote. And he canceled the planned meeting with Xi Jinping in South Korea, where the two leaders were supposed to seek a trade truce.
His words sank Wall Street: Dow Jones -1.07%, Nasdaq -2.35%, S&P 500 -1.61%, in a climate of growing nervousness. The American president accused China of wanting to “hold the world hostage” through its control of rare earths, essential for strategic technologies such as electric cars, chips and missiles.
China-Russia-India axis hypothesis
On a geopolitical level, the clash risks accelerating the formation of new economic and strategic alignments. While the West rallies around Washington, Beijing consolidates its network of alternative alliances: Russia and India, already coordinated within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SSO) and the enlarged Brics, are progressively aligning themselves with the logic of the “multipolar market”, more autonomous from the dollar and the logistics chains controlled by the United States.
In this context, the “port war” becomes the symbol of a broader fracture in the global trading system: a world in which the flows of goods and raw materials are increasingly filtered by political barriers and cross duties.
In the medium term, the escalation of duties and restrictions risks strengthening economic cooperation between China, Russia and India, with potentially disruptive effects for Western economies, dependent on the very supply chains that Beijing now controls.
Finally, there is a strategic element that should not be underestimated: trade tensions are becoming increasingly closely intertwined with the military and technological dimension. And the control of ports, maritime routes and strategic materials (rare earths, semiconductors) is increasingly an instrument of economic and geopolitical pressure.
