Doomsday tariffs threaten global stability

Editor's note: The reciprocal tariffs imposed by the US will damage its own and other countries' interests and the imposition is a severe violation of World Trade Organization rules, damaging the multilateral trading system. Three experts share their views on the issue with China Daily.

As I write, the United States and China are cascading into the abyss of an all-out trade war, the mother of economic battles that could be the harshest in human history, harming not only the American and Chinese people, but all the people gracing planet Earth.

The dreaded story hardly needs retelling: US President Donald Trump is threatening to increase tariffs on Chinese goods by 104 percent, thus levying total duties of more than 100 percent, if China does not back down and rescind its retaliatory tariffs to Trump's tariffs, while China is strongly and confidently asserting that it will not only not back down, but also "fight to the end". Trump says he is leveling the playing field after decades of abuse, while China says it does not want a fight but is not afraid of a fight, and the country has prepared a sophisticated toolkit of countermeasures.