“The wrong actions of the U.S. have brazenly violated the rules of the World Trade Organization, attacked the whole world’s economic sustainability and obstructed the global economy’s recovery,” Lu Kang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said in a daily news briefing. “It will bring disaster to multinational corporations, small and medium businesses and normal consumers across the world.”

China’s state-controlled news media echoed the sentiment.

“As the American side has gradually closed in on China, it has aroused the ire of Chinese society, and made Chinese people more clearheaded, more united,” said an editorial on the website of Global Times, a nationalist tabloid owned by the Communist Party. “Washington has obviously underestimated the giant force that the world’s opposition and China’s retaliation can produce.”

But Chinese news outlets have stopped short of language that would suggest appetite for a major escalation, such as a consumer boycott of American brands.

China has become a key market for brands such as Apple, Nike, Starbucks and General Motors. Consumer boycotts have proven effective in Beijing’s earlier disputes with South Korea, Japan and the Philippines. But targeting American goods could be trickier. The iPhones, Chevrolets and other goods that American companies sell in China are often made in China, and by Chinese workers.

Still, some consumers said they could imagine making do without iPhones or American cars as a way to strike back against Washington.