China has said it will raise tariffs on US goods to 125%, but will ignore President Donald Trump's further levies as it no longer makes economic sense for importers to buy from America.

After a week of market chaos in which the world's two largest economies took turns to erect trade barriers, Beijing dismissed Trump's increasingly brutal actions as a “joke” and a “numbers game”.

China accused Trump of unleashing market turmoil with the sweeping tariffs that have hit the world, and said the United States “should bear full responsibility” for the chaos.

Trump has unleashed sweeping tariffs, including painfully higher levies on dozens of major economies, as a cudgel to force manufacturers to base themselves in the U.S. and countries to lower barriers to American goods.

But after this week's market turmoil, he blinked first in his quest to rebuild the post-war world trade system and froze many tariffs for 90 days, though he raised them on China to a staggering 145 percent total.

Beijing's latest round of retaliation has seen tariffs rise to 125% as of April 12, AFP reports.

But China's finance ministry said further US action would be ignored because “at the current level of tariffs, there is no possibility of market acceptance of US goods exported to China.”

“The United States' imposition of round after round of unusually high tariffs on China has become a numbers game with no practical meaning in the economy,” Beijing's Ministry of Commerce said.

“If the United States continues to play the tariffs by numbers, China will ignore them,” it added.

Beijing will also file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization over the latest round of levies. | BGNES