HONG KONG, April 3 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Donald Trump’s second trade war is a battle of one against all. Reciprocal tariffs announced on Wednesday by the White House hit China with a hike of 34 percentage points, taking the fresh levies on exports from the People’s Republic up 54 percentage points in the 10 weeks since the U.S. president took office.
Nor did he sparethose who tried to surrender rather than retaliate. Some countries are worse off than others, but Washington has put all of Asia in pretty much the same tariff boat.
Japan gets a 24% levy despite its role as America’s geopolitical lynchpin in the region and massive foreign investment by giants like SoftBank (9984.T) South Korea’s many U.S. Army bases did not help it avoid a 26% hit; and neither did Taiwan’s vital role in supplying semiconductors for Silicon Valley titans, nor Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing's (2330.TW) pledge to invest in American chip production, prevent a 32% hike.