WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Thursday he was considering slapping tariffs on another $100 billion in Chinese imports, which would triple the amount of Chinese goods facing import levies.

The president cited China’s “unfair retaliation” as a reason for the additional potential levies. After the U.S. threatened on Tuesday to levy tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods for alleged violations of U.S. intellectual property laws, China quickly came up with its own $50 billion hit list of U.S. exports to China, including aircraft and soybeans.

Read Trump’s statement requesting $100 billion in additional China tariffs

The U.S. has said that it acted only a careful analysis of the facts but that China’s retaliation was without a similar analytical basis. China has also started an action in the World Trade Organization against the U.S. threatened retaliation.

In his statement, Trump said he was considering “$100 billion of additional tariffs,” but trade officials have been quick to point out that the dollar amounts don’t refer to tariffs themselves but to the amount of exports on which tariffs are levied. If tariffs are raised high enough, imports drop to zero, producing no additional tariff revenue.

This report originally appears on WSJ.com.

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