Tariffs: the US has already refunded $100 billion. China is ready to respond to Trump

The Donald Trump administration has paid out around $100 billion in rebates for tariffs since the US Supreme Court struck down, earlier this year, the use of emergency powers to impose tariffs on trading partners. The sum, amounting to 60 per cent of the $165 billion raised through the tariffs imposed by the president on ‘Liberation Day’, was disclosed on Tuesday by US customs officials to judges at the US International Trade Court, according to a report by the Financial Times.

Meanwhile, China has announced a number of countermeasures against the United States in response to US sanctions imposed in the name of combating forced labour and safeguarding national security, which specifically target Chinese humanoid robots. ‘China has no choice but to take the necessary countermeasures in response to these actions,’ a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement. These include tightening ‘exports to the United States of drones, key components and related technologies’. Overall, “the countermeasures adopted are limited” as Beijing “attaches great importance to the stability of economic and trade relations between China and the United States – a stability achieved with great difficulty”, the statement emphasised.

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as some commentators explain, has banned the import of new humanoid and quadrupedal robots manufactured in China, a ban officially justified on the grounds of national security risks and hypothetical espionage backdoors, but in reality, Washington aims to protect the American technology sector and curb Chinese dominance in advanced robotics.