Donald Trump’s tariff war has been wreaking havoc in global markets, but among exporters in China’s “trinket town” — the eastern city of Yiwu famous for making everything from Christmas trees to Donald Trump campaign caps — the mood is more of stoic defiance than panic.
Amid government invocations of late dictator Mao Zedong that are intended to project national strength, Chinese business people on the front lines of the trade war said they were confident their nation would prevail.
“Trump wants to steal a slice of China’s pie,” said exporter Kenny Qi in his small store festooned with “Make American Great Again” T-shirts in a vast Yiwu trade exhibition centre.
But Qi said Trump got a shock when Beijing retaliated with its own 125 per cent tariffs this week. He predicted the US president, whose visage glowered at him from a Maga T-shirt above his desk, would back down “in half a month at most”.
Trump’s new duties on Chinese goods are more than twice the 60 per cent tariffs he threatened during his election campaign — a level that many economists had at the time considered a worst-case scenario.
Beijing has stepped up its nationalist rhetoric to steel the public for the economic fallout from a hard decoupling with the US. Foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning posted on the social media site X a video of Mao giving a speech during the 1950-53 Korean war, when Chinese soldiers fought against US-led UN forces.
“No matter how long this war is going to last, we’ll never yield, we’ll fight until we completely triumph,” then-chairman Mao says in the clip.
We are Chinese. We are not afraid of provocations. We don’t back down. 🇨🇳 pic.twitter.com/vPgifasYmI
— Mao Ning 毛宁 (@SpoxCHN_MaoNing) April 10, 2025
In another post, the spokesperson quoted Mao as saying in 1964 that the “US intimidates certain countries, stopping them from doing business with us. But America is just a paper tiger. Don’t believe in its bluff. One poke, and it’ll burst”.
Beijing has accompanied its retaliatory tariffs with a host of other measures, vowing to reduce access for Hollywood movies and warning citizens against travelling to the US or studying there. Meanwhile, state media have pumped out stories about how Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities. The Communist party nationalist tabloid Global Times described one shortage as an “‘egg crisis’ sweeping the nation”.
“The news says Americans are already scrambling to buy eggs, flour and cooking oil,” said Nie Ziqin, who runs a store in Yiwu offering Halloween decorations intended for sale to the US and other countries.
