US politics live: China to impose 34 per cent tariff on all US goods

China said on Friday it would slap 34 percent tariffs on all imports of US goods after Washington imposed steep new levies on Chinese products.

China has levied huge 34 per cent tariffs on US goods as a trade war escalates.

But Donald Trump has given his first hint of pulling back on his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs that have roiled global markets and wiped nearly $US3.1 trillion off Wall Street.

Speaking aboard Air Force One late on Thursday, the US President said he was open to negotiating deals if other countries offered something “phenomenal” – hours after senior administration officials insisted the tariffs were not about negotiation.

Mr Trump on Wednesday announced the US would slap a baseline tariff of 10 per cent on all imports to the US, with additional “reciprocal” tariffs on certain countries at “approximately half” their existing rate of levies, which the White House claims it calculated to include “currency manipulation and trade barriers”.

Declaring a “national economic emergency”, the President said the tariffs were needed to address the “large and persistent annual US goods trade deficits, which have grown by over 40 per cent in the past five years alone” to the point America imported a record $US1.2 trillion more than it exported in 2024.

“Foreign nations will finally be asked to pay for the privilege of access to our market, the biggest market in the world,” Mr Trump said in a speech from the White House’s Rose Garden.

World leaders reacted with fury, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese saying US tariffs on Australian exports were “unwarranted” and “not the act of a friend”.

“A reciprocal tariff would be zero, not 10 per cent,” Mr Albanese told reporters on Thursday, adding the levies “have no basis in logic” and “go against the basis of our two nations’ partnership”.

Australia and the US have had a free-trade agreement since 2005. 

Originally published as US politics live: China to impose 34 per cent tariff on all US goods