Washington's tariff hikes on massive Chinese imports are tax increases for US consumers and businesses, which hit low-income Americans and exporters, US Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke said Thursday.

Adding extra tariffs on on roughtly 550 billion US dollars' worth of Chinese goods is "hitting low-income Americans especially hard" and "an attack on US exporters," O'Rourke wrote in an article published on Medium.com, a blog host website.

The tariffs "have driven up the price of imported intermediate parts, made the dollar less competitive, and caused other countries to retaliate against us with their own tariffs," he said.

US goods deficit with China stood at an annually adjusted 30.2 billion dollars in June, widening from 30.1 billion dollars in the previous month, according to the Commerce Department's latest report on US international trade.

"(President Donald) Trump started his trade war with China to reduce the US trade deficit, but the deficit is rising, not shrinking," said O'Rourke.
US overall trade deficit increased to 982.5 billion dollars in the second quarter, and trade chopped 0.72 percentage point from the 2 percent GDP growth in the three-month period, according to the Commerce Department's revised GDP report released Thursday.

O'Rourke in his article also highlighted the tariffs' harm to the US agriculture sector. The tariffs, he said, "have been a disaster for American farmers and ranchers, destroying their long-standing relationships with customers abroad and forcing many family farms into bankruptcy."