China’s Commerce Ministry says it will unveil a blacklist of “unreliable” foreign firms and individuals, amid a trade war initiated by the United States.

On May 16, the US Commerce Department added Chinese telecom giant Huawei to a list of entities with which US companies cannot engage in trade unless they get a license from authorities, although a 90-day reprieve was later issued.

Gao Feng, a spokesman for China’s Commerce Ministry, announced on Friday that Beijing would be releasing its own list of “unreliable entities.”

It will include “foreign enterprises, organizations, or individuals that do not comply with market rules, deviate from a contract’s spirit, or impose blockades or stop supplies to Chinese enterprises for non-commercial purposes, and seriously damage the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises,” the Chinese official explained.

He said detailed measures to be taken against the companies placed on the list would be released soon.

US President Donald Trump initiated what is effectively a trade war with China last year, when he first imposed unusually heavy tariffs on imports from the country. Since then, the two sides have exchanged tariffs on more than 360 billion dollars in two-way trade.

The Huawei ban prompted American Internet giant Google and its Android mobile operating system to suspend business with the Chinese tech giant.

Beijing and Washington have held talks to settle the issue, but to no avail so far. Their latest round of trade negotiations ended earlier this month without conclusion.

Earlier, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Hanhui accused Washington of practicing “naked economic terrorism” by engaging in the trade war on China.

‘Trump is lying’

Trump said on Thursday that the US tariffs had had a “devastating effect” on the Chinese economy.

Beijing denied Trump’s claim and dismissed it as a “lie.”

“The US side has said such lies not just once or twice. Every time China exposes them in time, but the US seems to be very persistent, even obsessed, and keeps repeating these lies,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a regular press briefing on Thursday.

China opposes the US tariff hikes, saying they are harmful not only to China and the US, but to the whole world. Washington, for its part, says a primary goal of the aggressive tariff strategy is to decrease the trade imbalance with China, which totaled 379 billion dollars in 2018.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that China would be halting purchases of soybeans from the US.