While slapping duties on steel and aluminum imports, President Donald Trump struck a more conciliatory tone towards China, pointing to negotiations under way to trim Washington's soaring bilateral trade deficit with Beijing.

"We're negotiating now with China. We're in the midst of a big negotiation. I don't know that anything is going to come of it," Trump said at the White House while rolling out the new trade barriers.

"They have been very helpful. President Xi, I have great respect for, lot of respect," Trump added. "We're going to cut down the deficits one way or another."

Trump claimed the US had a trade gap with China of "at least $500 billion" and said that, counting losses on intellectual property, "it's much bigger than that."

According to Commerce Department data, in 2017 the US-China trade deficit in goods only was actually $375.2 billion, the highest on record. US goods exports to China were also at a record high of $130.4 billion.

Trump also cited the founder of electric car maker Tesla, Elon Musk, saying US cars exported to China were met with duties of 25 percent while Chinese cars imported to the United States were taxed at a rate of only 2.5 percent.

"It's got to change," said Trump.

Trump in recent days has referred to negotiations underway with Beijing to reduce the US bilateral trade deficit by $100 billion without specifying how this can be done.

Washington has also launched a process which could see the US take retaliatory trade measures over intellectual property. At the same time, the United States and China maintain delicate diplomatic relations over efforts to contain North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

China consumer inflation almost doubles in February
Beijing (AFP) March 9, 2018 –

Chinese inflation almost doubled last month to its highest level in four years, data showed Friday, as holiday spending added to growing inflationary pressures in the world's second-largest economy.

The the key consumer price index (CPI) hit 2.9 percent in February, up from 1.5 percent in January and better than the 2.5 percent forecast in a survey by Bloomberg News.

China aims to keep CPI growth at "around three percent" in 2018, Premier Li Keqiang said earlier this week in his annual state-of-the-nation speech to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber-stamp legislature.

The year-on-year figure from the National Bureau of Statistics was fanned by the Lunar New Year — which began on February 16 — as Chinese typically purchase large amounts of food and gifts before the holiday, driving up prices.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese travelling back to their hometowns for the holiday also boost transportation prices.

But with the holiday now past, "year-on-year CPI growth will fall to some extent in March", NBS analyst Sheng Guoqing said.

The producer price index (PPI) — an important barometer of the industrial sector that measures the cost of goods at the factory gate — came in at 3.7 percent on-year.

That fell slightly short of the 3.8 percent forecast by Bloomberg News and was down from the 4.3 percent in the previous month.

"We can't ignore the much higher consumer inflation pressure this year, and that's what the central bank is looking at," Shen Jianguang, chief Asia economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg News.

"Monetary policy is already tightening."

Liu Xuezhi, an analyst at Bank of Communications Co. in Shanghai added that PPI would likely see moderate growth but was not expected to fall into negative territory

"PPI will likely see moderate growth, but is unlikely to fall into negative territory," .

Sustained inflation could complicate the efforts of the central bank to stimulate economic activity while also continuing a campaign to tighten regulation of the finance sector to curb surging credit and risky loans.