China’s Hong Kong Post has hit out at the US’ ‘unreasonable, bullying and abusive’ tariffs.
Earlier this month, April 2 marked ‘Liberation Day’ for the US, but for other countries? Well, it marked the beginning of an ongoing tariff war, with China among the worst hit.
President Donald Trump has unveiled a whopping total of 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods, and the country tried to hit back with its own retaliatory tariffs.
China’s commerce ministry has since warned the US to ‘take a big step back to correct its mistakes’ and ‘return to the right path of mutual respect’, and raised its retaliatory tariffs to 125 percent on US-manufactured goods. They’ve also banned its country’s airlines from completing any jet orders from US-based manufacturer Boeing.
And now, Americans’ post is no longer safe either, with Hong Kong Postal Services joining the feuding to retaliate after the US placed restrictions on its postal items.
The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region took to its website to reveal a press release titled: “Hongkong Post suspends the postal service for items containing goods to the United States.”
The release reads: “The Government of the United States (US) announced earlier that it would eliminate the duty-free de minimis treatment for postal items despatched from Hong Kong to the US and increase the tariffs for postal items containing goods to the US starting from May 2.”
Accusing the US of being ‘unreasonable, bullying and imposing tariffs abusively,’ Hongkong Post declared it ‘will definitely not collect any so-called tariffs on behalf of the US and will suspend the acceptance of postal items containing goods destined to the US’.
But what about surface mail and air mail?
Trump? Unreasonable? (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Well, ‘due to the longer shipping time’ of surface mail, Hongkong Post said it ‘will suspend the acceptance of surface postal items containing goods destined to the US with immediate effect (April 16)’.
“Where senders have posted surface postal items containing goods that have not yet been shipped to the US, Hongkong Post will contact the senders to arrange for return of items and postage refund starting from April 22,” it added.
For air mail, ‘Hongkong Post will suspend the acceptance of air postal items containing goods destined to the US starting from April 27’.
HongKong Post resolved as a result of ‘the US’ unreasonable and bullying acts,’ the public in Hong Kong ‘should be prepared to pay exorbitant and unreasonable fees’ to ‘send items to the US’ although ‘other postal items containing documents only without goods will not be affected’.
