China targets US agriculture over Trump tariff threat, Global Times says

A China-U.S. trade war is not inevitable, but Trump's decision to impose tariffs now is a bad decision,

said Wang Dong, executive director of the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding at Peking University

China is studying and formulating relevant countermeasures in response to the U.S. threat of imposing an additional 10% tariff on Chinese products under the pretext of fentanyl,

Global Times reported on Monday, citing an anonymous source

The countermeasures will likely include both tariffs and a series of non-tariff measures, and U.S. agricultural and food products will most likely be listed,

the report added

Despite a decline in imports since 2018, any tariffs on key U.S. agricultural products like soybeans, meat and grains could have a significant impact on U.S.-China trade as well as U.S. exporters and farmers,

said Genevieve Donnellon-May, a researcher at the Oxford Global Society

The U.S. agricultural sector has had time to prepare for a second Trump administration and trade war 2.0, with lessons learned from the first Trump administration,

she added