US may extend tariffs to cover all Chinese exports by December

The US administration may impose fresh tariffs on the People's Republic of China in little over a month.

According to Bloomberg, which cited three persons familiar with the matter, Washington would move ahead with tariffs on all of the remaining goods purchased from China, worth roughly $257bn, if talks between Donald Trump and his opposite number in Beijing, Xi Jinping, when they next met, failed to ease trade tensions.

An alternative under consideration, the newswire said, was to exclude trade from the meeting's agenda, although it was unlikely to be cancelled altogether.

Trump and Xi were expected to meet on the sidelines of the G-20 leaders' meeting in Buenos Aires, between 31 November and 1 December, although as recently as 25 October, the White House had indicated that the meeting remained in the planning stages.

Assuming the standard 60-day public comment period around the new measures, then the new measures might be expected to kick-in around the time of the Lunar New Year holidays, at the start of February.

Prior to that date, the 10% tariff on another $200bn-worth of Chinese goods approved in September was already set to increase to 25%.