The new Chinese distributor JD.com, page-4

Yes, but I wonder: are the proposed tariffs on those US goods simply reflective of a knee-jerk reaction on the part of China?.

Or could it be that the Chinese government is taking advantage of the tariff situation to implement policies that it would like to put in place anyway, but which would have been too difficult to justify without the 'Trump tariffs' to hide behind?.

Certainly, there is something odd about that list of US products that China has in its sights for retaliatory tariffs.

Of the total 128 items, the majority are fruit and nuts, or products that derive from these, such as wine.

Indeed, all of the listed items from no. 88 onward could be lumped into just three categories: steel products (mostly pipes/tubes), pork, and scrap aluminium.

If you take this into account, it would seem that almost everything on that list is related to the US fruit and nut industry.

Interestingly, a large number of pundits in the financial media had been suggesting that soybeans were the US agricultural product most likely to fall in the cross-hairs of China, as the US soybean producing states mostly backed Trump in the 2016 election. But soybeans are absent from the list.

I remember about two or three years back on this thread, there was one poster who highlighted that some large-scale plantings of almonds had been taking place in China. I recall another poster, a macadamia farmer, also noted that the Chinese had also been planting large numbers of macadamia trees.

If I remember correctly, I think the suggestion of the poster who raised the 'China almonds' topic was that these plantings would eventually put downward pressure on the almond price, an argument which I didn't think stacked up, for various reasons.

Still, it was an interesting point to raise. In China, almost nothing happens without the government having a hand in it, and if China has been planting large numbers of nut-trees, this might suggest that the authorities in that country are concerned about China's dependence on overseas countries for their supply of nuts.

Thus, it does seem to me that the Chinese would like to stimulate demand for locally grown fruit and nuts, and given the US is a major exporter of fruit and nuts, slapping tariffs on such produce from the US would be one way to achieve this end.

Under ordinary circumstances, this would be politically problematic: prices of fruit and nuts would rise in China, and the could result in popular dissatisfaction and unrest in the country, something the Chinese government would be keen to avoid. In addition, the implementation of such tariffs could lead to an escalating trade war, which could damage the Chinese economy and likely lead to further local unrest.

But the Trump tariffs provide the Chinese government with a bit of cover: if food prices rise as a result of the tariffs, the Chinese government can just point to Trump.

China would also probably hope that the higher fruit and nut prices would stimulate the local industry, thus reducing their dependence on foreign supply.

If this is indeed the aim of the Chinese government, I am a bit sceptical that they will fully meet their objective, particularly when it comes to almonds. For the most part, China is a pretty awful place to grow this crop. Pollinating almond trees by hand -a common practice in China due to insufficient bees-  just won't cut it.

So if China does go ahead with the tariffs on fruit and nut exports from the US, I suspect that in long run that this would most likely prove to be a boon for any almond growers outside of the US.