US President Donald Trump has slapped punishing new tariffs on imports of Chinese goods, deepening a trade war between the world's two largest economies.

Beijing has vowed countermeasures in response and warned the new tariffs will cripple global supply chains -- and Washington's own interests.

AFP looks at how so-called "liberation day" tariffs -- which bring levies on Chinese goods to 54 percent -- will hit China:

China's export-driven economy is particularly sensitive to vicissitudes in international trade.

Trade between it and the United States, the world's two largest economies, is vast.

According to Beijing's customs data, sales of Chinese goods to the United States last year totalled more than $500 billion -- 16.4 percent of the country's exports.

US duties also threaten to harm China's fragile economic recovery as it struggles with a long-running debt crisis in the property sector and persistently low consumption -- a downturn Beijing had sought to slow with broad fiscal stimulus last year.

But an intensified trade war will likely mean China cannot peg its hopes for strong economic growth this year on its exports, which........

© International Business Times