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Trump threatens tariffs on $100 billion more China goods; Beijing says will fight back

China warned on Friday it would fight back “at any cost” with fresh trade measures if the United States continues on its path of protectionism, hours after President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on an additional $100 billion in Chinese goods.

Trump said the United States has already lost any trade war, as he defended his proposed tariffs, saying the move might cause “a little pain” but the United States will be better off in the long run.

“We’ve already lost the trade war. We don’t have a trade war, we’ve lost the trade war,” Trump said in a radio interview with New York radio show, 77 WABC’s “Bernie & Sid” early on Friday. In a Twitter message on Wednesday, he had said: “That war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the US.”

China’s commerce ministry was due to hold a media briefing at 1200 GMT on Friday.

In light of China’s “unfair retaliation” against earlier US trade actions, Trump upped the ante on Thursday by ordering US officials to identify extra tariffs, escalating a high stakes tit-for-tat confrontation with potentially damaging consequences for the world’s two biggest economies.

On Wednesday, China unveiled a list of 106 US goods – from soybeans and whiskey to frozen beef and aircraft – targeted for tariffs, in a swift retaliatory move only hours after the Trump administration proposed duties on some 1,300 Chinese industrial, technology, transport and medical products.

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