TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The plan by United States President Donald Trump to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will damage global free trade, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said Friday.

The U.S. president’s statement provoked angry reactions from all over the world, while stock markets, including New York’s Dow Jones, plunged on fears of trade wars. Trump said steel imports would face a tariff of 25 percent and aluminum imports 10 percent.

The impact of the measures on Taiwanese manufacturers was still difficult to estimate as no details had been revealed yet, the MOEA said, as reported by the Central News Agency. However, since they had been motivated by trade protectionism, they were not a positive development from the view of global trade, the ministry added.

Steel products from Taiwan were already subject to 13 types of anti-dumping tariffs, while other specific related products were the target of anti-dumping investigations, according to the MOEA. It now remained to be seen whether the new tariffs announced by Trump would be added on top of those already in function, the ministry said.

According to U.S. customs data, in 2017 the country imported 5.61 percent of its steel products from Taiwan, for a value of US$3.6 billion (NT$106 billion), while 0.33 percent of its aluminum products came from the island, for a total value of US$57 million (NT$1.67 billion), CNA reported.

Several steel suppliers to the U.S. threatened countermeasures, including Canada, the European Union, China, Brazil and Mexico, the BBC reported. President Trump said the U.S. had been decimated by unfair trade and bad policy, while critics of his decision said the tariffs would not protect any jobs but make a range of products more expensive.