US President Donald Trump's increased tariffs on Chinese goods are hurting foreign investors in China, including American companies. This was said by Zhu Bin, director of the Foreign Investment Management Department of China's Ministry of Commerce.
„The additional tariffs imposed by the United States seriously violate WTO rules - the World Trade Organization. They are not only unfavorable to the United States in solving its own problems, but also undermine normal Sino-US trade and economic cooperation, he stressed at a press conference.
“These tariffs have an adverse impact on the development of foreign enterprises based in China, including American companies.“
As the official specified, Washington's protectionist measures hinder the investment intentions of transnational corporations. “At the same time, I would like to point out that China's economic foundation is stable, has many advantages, has strong resilience, great potential and has a long-term improvement trend“, he added.
According to Zhu Bin, the position of the PRC leadership on stimulating the inflow of foreign capital will not change. He noted that many international companies are optimistic about the prospects for investing in projects in China. "We will continue to work hard to create a first-class international business environment so that more foreign-invested enterprises can seize development opportunities," the head of the department stressed.
On February 1, Trump signed an executive order to impose higher tariffs on goods from Canada, China and Mexico. The 10% tariffs on imports from China took effect on February 4, while tariffs on Canadian and Mexican products were postponed for a month pending negotiations with the governments of these countries.
According to China's Ministry of Commerce, the volume of real foreign investment in the country in January amounted to $13.6 billion, a decrease of 13.4% year on year. Compared with December, the figure increased by 27.5%. The number of new foreign-invested enterprises established in China last month fell 7.8 percent year-on-year to 4,229.