'Ominous': CNN host floored as China responds to Trump's 'mind-boggling threat'
President Donald Trump’s new trade threats targeting China prompted officials in Beijing to hit back with their own cryptic message on Monday – an escalation that CNN’s Erin Burnett demonstrated will have real-world effects on American consumers.
“China punching back, aiming an ominous tweet moments ago at Trump,” Burnett said as she summed up Monday’s fast-moving events, which included the Chinese embassy’s official social media account simply tagging “@realDonaldTrump” in a post.
“China responding to Trump's mind-boggling threat today,” she said, adding: “They posted it, though, just below a post they pinned moments before, which reads, ‘China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests. This is a typical move of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying.’”
The primetime host used her Monday evening opening monologue to lay into the tariff war of words sparked by Trump’s Rose Garden “Liberation Day” announcement last week – which he followed up Monday with threats of even more tariffs on Chinese goods.
“I said if that tariff isn’t removed by tomorrow at 12 o’clock, we’re putting a 50% tariff on above the tariffs that we’ve put on,” Trump told reporters Monday in response to China slapping retaliatory tariffs of 34%.
“50% in a setting like that – I mean, it sounds deeply unserious,” Burnett chided. “It sounds made up, it sounds petulant. On what basis? another 50%.”
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“So here's the situation,” Burnett said as she crunched the numbers for viewers.
“Just going off the new tariffs in the past week, just those, buying something that was $10 from China a week ago – if you went online at Amazon, it came from China, it was 10 bucks – it would be $18.50 Wednesday. $10 a week ago, $18.50 on Wednesday,” she emphasized. “That's insane.”
The CNN host reminded viewers that Trump has promised to slap 25% tariffs “on any country that imports Venezuelan oil.”
“China is the largest importer of Venezuelan oil, so that would bring the total tariffs not to 104%, but 129%,” she concluded.