China has hit back against US President Donald Trump's "liberation day" tariffs, slapping 34 percent levies on all imports of American goods.

AFP looks at how an escalating trade war between the United States and China is playing out -- and what impact it might have.

Trade between the world's two largest economies is vast.

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

And China imported $143.5 billion in goods from the United States in 2024, according to the office of the US Trade Representative.

But China has long drawn Trump's ire with a trade surplus with the United States that reached $295.4 billion last year, according to the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Beijing's leaders have been reluctant to disrupt the status quo, in part because China's export-driven economy is particularly sensitive to vicissitudes in international trade.

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........

© International Business Times