President Trump said Friday he will impose an additional 100% tariff on imports from China starting next month, citing new Chinese export controls — marking a significant escalation in the U.S.-China trade war.

The new 100% tariffs will add on to any existing import taxes on Chinese goods, the president wrote in a Truth Social post. Tariffs on Chinese imports currently stand at 30%. Mr. Trump said the U.S. will also impose export controls on "any and all critical software" starting next month.

The tariffs could be imposed on Nov. 1 or sooner, "depending on any further actions or changes taken by China," Mr. Trump said.

On Sunday, China signaled that it would not back down in the face of the tariff threat and urged the U.S. to resolve differences through negotiations instead of threats.

"China's stance is consistent," the Commerce Ministry said in a statement posted online Sunday. "We do not want a tariff war but we are not afraid of one."

It was China's first official comment on Mr. Trump's threat to jack up the tax on imports from China by Nov. 1 in response to new Chinese restrictions on the export of rare earths, which are vital to a wide range of consumer and military products.

The president's announcement came hours after he threatened steeper duties on China. He pointed to new Chinese rules that require companies to get special approval to export products containing even trace amounts of rare earths from China, even if they were manufactured outside of the country. China mines and processes most of the world's rare earth metals, which are critical minerals used to manufacture products including semiconductors, electric car batteries, jet engines and defense weapons.

"It is impossible to believe that China would have taken such an action, but they have, and the rest is History," the president wrote in his Friday message announcing the tariffs, calling China's export controls "extraordinarily aggressive" and a "moral disgrace."

Separately on Friday, China imposed port fees on U.S.-owned ships that dock in the country, retaliating against what Beijing called a "discriminatory" U.S. port fee on Chinese ships.

Major stock indexes fell sharply on Friday after Mr. Trump's initial tariff threat. The S&P 500 dropped 2.7%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average 1.8% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite 3.6%.

The new tariffs and export restrictions could inflame trade talks between China and the Trump administration. Mr. Trump is set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month, but the U.S. president said earlier Friday, "there seems to be no reason" for the meeting to take place.

China is the United States' third-largest trading partner after Mexico and Canada, with the U.S. importing $438.9 billion worth of Chinese goods and China buying $143.5 billion in U.S. goods last year, according to federal statistics.

But China and the U.S. have had a rocky relationship on trade in recent months. Over the spring, American tariffs on Chinese goods spiked to 145% and Chinese tariffs on U.S. imports soared to 125%, following a set of tit-for-tat hikes that began with import duties unveiled by the Trump administration. In May, the U.S. and China agreed to slash their tariffs to 30% and 10%, respectively, while the two sides pursued a broader trade deal.

The U.S.-China economic relationship has other complexities, too. The Trump administration needs Beijing's permission to close a deal to transfer ownership of TikTok's U.S. operations away from China-based parent company ByteDance. China has also chafed at some of the administration's restrictions on international students.

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