(ZEROHEDGE) – China has drastically ramped up its trade conflict with Australia, on Friday slapping a whopping 200% tax on all Australian wine, in a move being widely described as the first shot fired in what went from behind-the-scenes bureaucratic punitive actions to now an open trade war.
"The Ministry of Commerce imposed import taxes of up to 212.1%, effective Saturday, which Australia’s trade minister said make Australian wine unsellable in China, his country’s biggest export market," the AP reports. The lead industry body Wine Australia, said the country's total shipments to China in the first nine months of 2020 accounted for 39% of all Australian wines.
Australia has been among those countries, foremost among them the United States under Trump, leading the charge of criticism aimed at Beijing over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, lately calling for a formal international probe into the deadly virus' origins there.
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