China has threatened to retaliate against Donald Trump after the US president said he would impose 25% tariffs on countries that trade with Iran as a way of punishing Tehran for its brutal crackdown on the biggest anti-regime protests in years.
Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said Beijing would “take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests” after Trump threatened to ramp up the global trade war.
Trump, who is still reviewing a range of military options against the Iranian regime, said the new tariffs would be “effective immediately”, without providing further details about whether there would be any exemptions, including for countries that only trade humanitarian goods such as medicines. More than 140 countries still trade with Iran, according to the World Bank, but sometimes only in minuscule amounts.
US secondary sanctions until this point had been aimed at companies that trade with Iran, and then seek to use the dollar for any transaction. Trump is proposing that a 25% tariff should be imposed on an entire country if it is trading with Iran.
In March last year, Trump proposed a similar measure of imposing tariffs on countries trading with Venezuela, but it was left to the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to complete the details and was never implemented.
China is by far Iran’s biggest trading partner, buying 77% of its oil exports in 2024, according to the data firm Kpler. It hrecently ended a tariff war with Trump.
Liu wrote on X: “Tariff wars and trade wars have no winners, and coercion and pressure cannot solve problems. Protectionism harms the interests of all parties.”
Other countries that trade heavily with Iran are India, the United Arab Emirates, Japan and South Korea. Japan and South Korea have just completed free trade deals with the US after a bruising confrontation over tariffs. Both countries ended up with a baseline 15% tariff, but now find themselves back in a potential crisis.
It was not immediately clear how the new measure would be applied and whether the 25% tariff on “any and all business being done with the United States of America” would be in addition to Washington’s “reciprocal” import tax rates for each country. China already faces a 45% tariff for most goods. India faces a current tariff of 40% imposed for trading in Russian oil.
In a Truth Social Post on Monday, Trump said: “Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America.” Tariffs are paid by US importers of goods from those countries.
Trump’s national security team is expected to hold a meeting at the White House on Tuesday to discuss options for Iran but it is unclear whether the president himself will be in attendance. Military options include hitting Iran’s police headquarters with cruise missile sites and more targeted assassinations.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters on Monday that airstrikes were among the “many, many options” that Trump was considering but that “diplomacy is always the first option for the president”.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has said lines of communication are still open with the US special envoy, Steve Witkoff. There is no public sign yet that Iran sees its internal crisis as so existential that it needs to change its nuclear programme to meet US demands, and so gain relief from already crippling US sanctions. Araghchi has been at the forefront of ministers claiming the protests were hijacked by foreign terrorist groups.
The demonstrations in Iran have evolved from complaints about dire economic hardships to defiant calls for the fall of the deeply entrenched clerical establishment. The authorities have responded with a harsh crackdown including mass arrests, internet blackouts and public warnings that participation in the demonstrations could carry the death penalty.
Reporting restrictions and the online shutdown make it difficult to determine the death toll. An Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday that about 2,000 people had been killed, but the true number could be much higher.
The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said on Tuesday: “I assume that we are now witnessing the final days and weeks of this regime. When a regime can only maintain power through violence, then it is effectively at its end. The population is now rising up against this regime.”
Trump’s wider policy of imposing tariffs through executive order is under legal pressure as the US supreme court is considering striking down a broad swathe of the president’s existing tariffs.
Trump said in a Truth Social post that “it would be a complete mess” if the supreme court were to strike down his global trade tariffs. A decision could come as soon as Wednesday. It is a crucial legal test of his controversial economic strategy and his power.
Trump said it would be difficult to reverse the tariffs as businesses and countries could claim refunds, saying: “It would take many years to figure out what number we are talking about and even, who, when, and where, to pay.” He added: “It would be a complete mess, and almost impossible for our Country to pay.”
