CHINA HAS THREATENED to retaliate against the US following President Donald Trump’s decision to impose 10% tariffs.

China says the US action violates World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, which govern global commerce, and has vowed to raise a legal case.

It has also promised to take “necessary counter-measures to defend its legitimate rights and interests”.

A statement from China’s foreign ministry said that China “calls on the United States to correct its wrongdoings, maintain the hard-won positive dynamics in the counternarcotics cooperation, and promote a steady, sound and sustainable development of China-US relationship”.

Trump accuses China of allowing the production of fentanyl that is then made into tablets in Mexico and smuggled into and distributed throughout the US, which records around 70,000 overdose deaths from the drug annually.

China says the US must hold itself to account instead of “threatening other countries with arbitrary tariff hikes”.

“The United States needs to view and solve its own fentanyl issue in an objective and rational way,” China’s foreign ministry said, adding that China is “one of the world’s toughest countries on counter-narcotics both in terms of policy and its implementation”.

Experts say China executes an unknown number of people each year for smuggling drugs but domestic drug use is relatively low.

A statement from China’s ministry of public security said the US has not reported any fentanyl precursor seizures originating in China since Beijing began to take legal action.

The United States’ enormous trade deficit with China has been a constant target of Trump’s complaints.

Tariffs make Chinese goods more expensive for US consumers, who ultimately have to pay a significant part of the cost of importing goods. China’s vital export market could be affected if US consumers decide to “buy American” instead.

The Chinese domestic economy has failed to respond to a range of government-backed stimuli, while foreign infrastructure projects and other major government initiatives that add to the country’s already high public debt threaten more economic stagnation.

That is already starting to derail Chinese President Xi Jinping’s push to overtake the US in key economic and political indicators, threatening his ultimate ambition to conquer the island republic of Taiwan and assert Chinese primacy in the Indo-Pacific region.

Stopping illegal immigration has also been one of Trump’s core political messages and was named in tariff actions against US neighbours Mexico and Canada.

Arrivals from China are considered a fraction of such numbers but Trump has put virtually every country on notice that he will hold them accountable for their nationals who enter the US outside the law.