US President Donald Trump announced on August 23 on Twitter that the US will impose a new round of tariffs on imports from China, by levying an additional five percent duty on some $550 billion worth of targeted Chinese goods.
Later on the same day, China’s Ministry of Finance (MOF) announced that China will impose additional tariffs of five percent or 10 percent on 5,078 US goods worth $75.0 billion. The duties will be implemented in two rounds: from September 15 and from December 15, 2019.
The intensifying US-China trade war has increased fears among market players that the global economy will enter into recession.
In particular, 10 percent additional tax will be imposed by China on hot rolled coil, a number of section and profile products, stainless steel, billets, ingots, long steel products and major ferroalloys - in particular, ferromanganese, ferromolybdenum, ferro-silico-manganese, ferrotungsten, ferro-silico-tungsten, ferrotitanium and ferrosilicon titanium. Some other ferroalloys, thick and wide flat rolled tin plating iron or unalloyed steel, and oriented silicon electric steel narrow plate will be hit by five percent additional tax.
The intensification of the trade war has led to a drop in steel futures at Shanghai Future Exchange at the start of the current week, with rebar futures prices losing 1.8 percent since Friday, August 23, closing at RMB 3,372/mt. Iron ore futures at Dalian Commodity Exchange have also fallen by 1.8 percent on Monday, coming to RMB 593.5/mt at the end of the day.