The US president has warned China and other trade partners against escalating beyond the trade war.

While responding to concerns that his tariff war with China could spiral out of control, President Donald Trump boasted that the US has military power and weapons that “nobody has any idea” about.

In retaliation for countermeasures imposed by Beijing, Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods to 125% on Wednesday

China has yet to respond to the latest hike, though the Ministry of Commerce previously vowed to fight the trade war “to the end.”

RT reports: Asked whether he was concerned about Beijing’s next moves – and a potential “escalation beyond the trade war” – Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping is “one of the very smart people of the world” who would never “allow that to happen.”

“We’re very powerful. This country is very powerful. It’s far more powerful than people understand. We have weaponry that nobody has any idea what it is, and it is the most powerful weapons in the world that we have. More powerful than anybody even, not even close,” he told journalists in the Oval Office.

“So nobody’s going to do that,” Trump added, reiterating that Xi is a “very smart man” who “knows exactly what has to be done.”

The US president, who has previously teased secret weapons using unusual scientific terminology, did not elaborate on the kind of weapons he was referring to this time.

In 2020, Trump touted what he called a “super duper missile” that could fly “17 times faster” than anything America’s adversaries had in their arsenals. He also claimed that Russia’s hypersonic technological breakthroughs resulted from stealing US missile plans during the presidency of Barack Obama – despite the fact that the US has yet to field an operational hypersonic weapon.

Moscow and Beijing have pulled ahead in the race to develop hypersonic weapons over the past decade. Russia put its first system of the kind, the air-launched Kinzhal missile, into service in 2017. China rolled out its DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle two years later.

Russia has used both the Kinzhal and the naval Zircon hypersonic missile during the Ukraine conflict. Last November, Moscow also carried out the first combat test of its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, fitted with multiple independently targetable warheads capable of hypersonic speeds.