In latest salvo against tariffs, China assails ‘peasants in the U.S.’

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A senior Chinese official warned Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s tariffs would backfire and that soon, “those peasants in the U.S.” would “wail in front of the 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.”

The remarks are the latest Chinese repudiation of Trump’s global trade war as Beijing shifts gears from attempting to communicate with the White House to hitting back frequently and forcefully in an effort to cast the United States as an irresponsible global power.

China’s top official overseeing Hong Kong and Macao, Xia Baolong, lashed out at the U.S. during a speech on national security, in which he linked 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong with what Beijing sees as continued U.S. efforts to suppress China.

Xia called the U.S. decision to levy a tariff of 145 percent on all goods from Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, “brutally unreasonable and extremely shameless.”

“The U.S. isn’t after our tariffs but our very survival,” he said. “The U.S. has repeatedly contained and suppressed Hong Kong … and this will eventually backfire on itself.”

Since Trump took office in January and set about remaking the global trading system, the world’s two largest economies have levied import duties on each other that are now so high they amount to a trade embargo.

China has countered Washington’s latest levies by imposing a tariff of 125 percent on all U.S. goods while Trump has maintained 145 percent taxes on all Chinese imports, with temporary exceptions for semiconductors and consumer electronics.

The trade war raises the risk of a severing of economic ties that would bring confrontation between the two superpowers to a new level.

Xia’s comment on Tuesday came after Vice President JD Vance said this month that Americans, through Chinese purchases of U.S. government bonds, essentially “borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”

The Chinese Embassy in Argentina also responded Tuesday to remarks by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who had said China “added huge amounts of debt” to Latin American budget sheets through “rapacious deals” masquerading as international aid.

“We advise the U.S. to adjust its mindset, instead of spending time repeatedly smearing and attacking China, meddling in the foreign cooperation of regional countries,” the embassy said.