China on Tuesday imposed tariffs on imports of coal and liquefied natural gas from the United States, in retaliation for Washington’s 10% levies on Chinese goods.

Finance Ministry, within minutes of US President Donald Trump’s announcement of “unilateral tariff hike”, said it would impose levies of 15% for US coal and LNG. Beijing’s new tariffs on US exports will start on February 10, the ministry said.

It also unveiled 10% tariffs on imports from the United States of crude oil, agricultural machinery, large-displacement vehicles and pickup trucks.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday announced sweeping measures against major trade partners including Canada and Mexico, with goods from China facing an additional 10% tariff on top of the duties they already endure.

Trump said the measures aimed to punish countries for failing to halt flows of illegal migrants and drugs including fentanyl into the United States.

The US move, China said, “seriously violates World Trade Organisation rules, does nothing to resolve its own problems, and disrupts normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the United States”.

It filed a complaint with the WTO today “to defend its legitimate rights and interests” in response to hiked US tariffs on Chinese goods.

“China has filed a case against the US tariff measures under the WTO dispute settlement mechanism,” the commerce ministry said in a statement, adding the US actions were of a “malicious nature”.

Beijing’s tariffs, which come into force next Monday, were announced shortly after Trump said he would hold a call with President Xi Jinping in the next 24 hours.

China to probe Google over anti-monopoly violations

Beijing also said it would probe US tech giant Google over violations of anti-monopoly laws. The State Administration for Market Regulation said the US tech giant was “suspected of violating the Anti-Monopoly Law of the People’s Republic of China”.

It has “launched an investigation into Google in accordance with the law” as a result, the administration said in a statement.

It did not provide further details about the allegations against Google.

The US tech behemoth’s core search engine and many of its services are blocked in mainland China, where US internet titans have long struggled with doing business due to the “Great Firewall” that blocks politically sensitive content.

Google in 2011 abandoned its Chinese-language search engine in the mainland and transferred it to Hong Kong.

By 2014, China blocked the last remaining way to access Google’s email service Gmail.

Beijing also said Tuesday it would add US fashion group PVH Corp — which owns Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein — and biotech giant Illumina to a list of “unreliable entities”.

The move would “safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, in accordance with relevant laws”, China´s commerce ministry said in a statement.

“The above two entities violate normal market transaction principles, interrupt normal transactions with Chinese enterprises, and take discriminatory measures against Chinese enterprises,” it added.

China in September said it was investigating PVH for an “unreasonable” boycott of cotton from its Xinjiang region, where Beijing is accused of widespread rights violations.

Canada, Mexico deals

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had both earlier struck last-minute deals with Trump to tighten border measures against the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the United States, leading to a 30-day pause on threatened tariffs.

Asian equities spiked Tuesday on news of the paused tariffs, and hopes that similar negotiations could relieve the levies against the world’s number-two economy provided extra optimism. However, traders pared some of those gains as China unveiled its measures.

Global stock markets had slumped Monday as Trump’s threat of sweeping 25% levies on imports from Canada and Mexico sparked fears of a global trade war.

Trump said that after “very friendly” talks with Sheinbaum he would “immediately pause” the tariffs on Mexico, and that his counterpart had agreed to send 10,000 troops to the US-Mexico frontier.

‘Not a trade war’

Tensions appeared higher between the United States and Canada — but after two calls with Trudeau, Trump said on Truth Social that the prime minister had “agreed to ensure we have a secure Northern Border, and to finally end the deadly scourge of drugs like Fentanyl”.

Trudeau said Canada would deploy nearly 10,000 frontline officers to help secure the border, list drug cartels as terrorists, appoint a “Fentanyl Czar” and crack down on money laundering.

It was not clear the real extent of the changes on the Canadian border, given that authorities said in December they already had 8,500 personnel deployed.

Canada, China and Mexico are the United States’ three biggest trading partners.

The White House said earlier there had been a “heck of a lot of talks” over the weekend.

“This is not a trade war, this is a drug war,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC, complaining that “the Canadians appeared to have misunderstood the plain language”.

However, US government figures show that only a minimal quantity of drugs enter via Canada.

The US president — who has said that the word “tariff” is the “most beautiful word in the dictionary” — is going even further in his second term on the levies than he did in his first.

He has insisted that the impact would be borne by foreign exporters without being passed on to American consumers, despite most experts saying the contrary.

But the billionaire 78-year-old did acknowledge as he returned from a weekend at his Florida resort Sunday that Americans might feel economic “pain”.