Coal and gas among US targets of China’s retaliatory tariffs

Other steps Beijing has taken in response to the Trump administration’s new tariffs include adding more US companies to its blacklist “unreliable entity” list.

This time PHV Corp, the company that owns fashion brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, and US biotechnology firm Illumina, have both been targeted.

In a statement, China’s commerce ministry accused the firms of “discriminatory measures against Chinese enterprises”.

Firms added to the list may face a number of sanctions including fines and having the work visas of their foreign employees revoked.

Beijing has also announced plans to restrict the export of 25 critical minerals, some of which are key components for electrical products.

These include tungsten, which is difficult to source and a crucial material for the aerospace industry, tellurium, widely used for solar panels, and molybdenum, which is used to strengthen steel alloys.

A Chinese watchdog has launched an investigation into Google for alleged violations of competition rules, known as antitrust.

Although Google’s search services have been blocked in China since 2010, it still has some business activities in China. It still provides apps and games to the Chinese market through partnership with local developers for example.

Both the US and China have in the past imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of one another’s goods in the past as part of an ongoing trade war.