Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday that will give trade officials two weeks to come up with a list of Chinese-made products on which to put tariffs, with the goal of slapping $50 billion US in punitive damages on a country the U.S. says doesn't trade fairly.

A little after noon ET in Washington, the U.S. president signed a document instructing the Treasury Department to look at implementing tariffs on a wide swath of Chinese-made products, under the guise of fighting back against unfair trading practices.

"The word I want to use here is reciprocal," the president said, citing the example of tariffs that Chinese companies put on American cars. "When they charge 25 per cent and we charge 2.5 per cent that's not reciprocal," he said.

This was excerpted from the 22 March 2018 edition of CBC News.