BEIJING, Feb 4, (AP): China countered President Donald Trump's tariffs on Chinese products with tariffs of its own on multiple US imports Tuesday as well as announcing an antitrust investigation into Google and other trade measures. US tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico also were to go into effect Tuesday, though Trump agreed to a 30-day pause on his threats against Mexico and Canada as they acted to appease his concerns about border security and drug trafficking.

Trump planned to talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the next few days. This isn't the first round of tit-for-tat actions between the two countries. China and the US had engaged in a trade war in 2018 when Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods and China responded in kind. This time, analysts said, China is much better prepared to counter.

"They have a much more developed export control regime. We depend on them for a lot of critical minerals: gallium, germanium, graphite, a host of others. So … they could put some significant harm on our economy,” said Philip Luck, a former State Department official and director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Monday at a forum.

The slew of measures announced Tuesday cut across different sectors of the economy, from energy to individual U.S. companies. China said it would implement a 15% tariff on coal and liquefied natural gas products as well as a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery and large-engine cars imported from the US. The tariffs would take effect next Monday.

"The US’s unilateral tariff increase seriously violates the rules of the World Trade Organization," the State Council Tariff Commission said in a statement. "It is not only unhelpful in solving its own problems, but also damages normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the US.” China is the world's largest importer of liquefied natural gas, with its top suppliers being Australia, Qatar and Malaysia.

The US, which is the biggest exporter of LNG globally, does not significantly export LNG to China. In 2023, the U.S. exported 173,247 million cubic feet of LNG to China, representing about 2.3% of total natural gas export volumes, according to data released by the US Energy Information Administration. In addition to the tariffs, China announced export controls on several elements critical to the production of modern high-tech products.