China said Thursday that "trust" was a precondition for trade negotiations with the US, adding that the two sides are not currently discussing restarting negotiations.

Beijing blamed Washington for expanding the scope of the trade conflict with its latest tariff threats and repeated that China would not back down from a trade fight.

"China resolutely opposes the US's trade bullying behaviour and will have no choice but to strike back," said commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng, without providing details of China's plan.

Washington on Tuesday threatened to slap $200 billion of Chinese imports with new 10 percent tariffs and on Wednesday called for a "reckoning" over China's membership in the World Trade Organization.

The spiralling tit-for-tat trade fight has shown no sign of finding an exit ramp despite calls by cooler heads on both sides for negotiations to resume.

A prominent member of Trump's Republican Party, Representative Kevin Brady, called for a summit between Trump and his counterpart Xi Jinping to hash out the issues.

And China's vice minister of commerce told Bloomberg on Wednesday that the two sides should try to find a solution.

"When we have a trade problem, we should talk about it," Wang Shouwen said in the interview with Bloomberg.

But Gao said there were no talks between the two powers.

"China has said many times, the precondition for talks is trust," Gao said.

"Both sides have not had contact on restarting the talks."

The Communist Party's flagship newspaper the People's Daily accused the White House of "losing touch with reality" in an editorial Thursday.

"Hoping for China to swallow a bitter fruit harming our core interests is doomed to be the biggest strategic miscalculation," it stated.

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