US tariffs to punish China, sources say
The president’s message to his trade chief’s US$30b was ‘make it bigger’
President Donald Trump has ordered his chief trade negotiator to develop tougher tariff proposals to punish China for years of stealing US trade secrets, according to industry executives familiar with the matter.
The order came after Trump last week rejected as inadequate a proposal from US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to levy import taxes on US$30 billion of Chinese imports, the people said.
The president’s message to his trade chief was “make it bigger,” said one lobbyist familiar with the discussion.
“The president told him it wasn’t enough,” said a second executive.
Both executives spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The White House meeting was first reported yesterday by Politico.
The report comes amid turmoil in the administration’s senior ranks with the departure of National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, both of whom have urged the president to avoid disrupting global commerce with new trade barriers in addition to recently announced tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Their departures followed the loss of Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary, who ran weekly tradepolicy meetings in the West Wing.
With fewer adherents of mainstream trade policy advising the president, economic nationalists such as Peter Navarro, a White House economist and fierce critic of China, have encouraged the president to follow his tariff-raising instincts.
In August, the president directed Lighthizer to investigate whether China’s intellectual-property policies discriminated against US companies. Beijing often requires foreign companies to surrender trade secrets in return for the right to operate in China, where rampant piracy of products including clothes and computer software has long bedevilled multinational corporations.
Under US trade law, Lighthizer isn’t due to deliver the results of his probe until August.
But his boss is impatient for action, and some trade analysts say they expect an announcement of new US trade measures next week.
Specifics of the coming crackdown on China remain subject to change.
The US imported more than US$505b worth of goods from China last year while sending more than US$130b in the other direction, according to the Census Bureau.
The administration also is considering imposing new limits on Chinese investment in the United States, which topped US$29b last year, according to the Rhodium Group, a New York-based consultancy.
Trump on Monday blocked Singapore-based Broadcom’s proposed US$117b acquisition of chip maker Qualcomm, citing national security concerns believed to involve the Asian company’s ties to a Chinese telecommunications company.