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The Tariff Law, approved by China’s top legislature after three rounds of deliberations going back to 2022, signals to China’s biggest trade partners its ability to hit back should they impose tariffs on exports of the world’s No.2 economy. Beijing has stepped up its trade defense capabilities since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, ushering in laws empowering officials with ways of retaliating against countries that take issue with the way China trades by interfering with the movement of goods, data and personnel between those markets.
“You could argue that this is not really necessary, as when China upgraded its Foreign Trade Law in 2004, there were measures on applying retaliatory tariffs,” Gao added.