Business owners pan tariff plan
They worry levies on Chinese goods will harm them
WASHINGTON — Fishermen off the Alaskan coast. A Florida maker of boat trailers. A building materials distributor in Tennessee.
Those and hundreds of other American businesses are delivering the same plea to President Donald Trump as he considers imposing tariffs on nearly 40 percent of imported Chinese goods:
Don’t do it.
The Trump administration on Monday began holding six days of hearings in Washington on the next barrage in an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies: Trump’s proposed tariffs of 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion of Chinese goods that could kick in as early as next month.
JOANN Stores, which sells fabric and crafting supplies, says it imports about 500 items on the tariff list, including fleece, yarn and cotton fabric. Ed Weinstein, JOANN’S vice president of tax and public affairs, said he doesn’t understand how supplies for knitters and crafters became caught up in a trade dispute over high-tech policy.
“Our products are very simple,” Weinstein said. “I would never have expected to see fabric and craft components on the tariff list.”
In their filings with the Trump administration, companies that import from China complain that the tariffs will force them to raise prices, pay higher costs, try to find alternative suppliers or lose business to foreign rivals that don’t have to pay a penalty on components and machinery they import from China.
“If you look at the filings, a lot of them are mom-and-pop businesses saying, ‘Please don’t do this to us,’ ” said Bryan Riley, director of the Free Trade Initiative at the conservative National Taxpayers Union.
Can the U.S. and China avoid a $200 billion tariff collision? Hopes rose last week on news that China will send an envoy to Washington this month to discuss a way out of the standoff. But many trade analysts aren’t very optimistic.
“China is not going to become a functioning market economy as we would like to see it in the next two months or even in the next two years,” said Bradford Ward, a former U.S. trade official and now at the law firm King & Spalding. “People need to prepare for and plan for the long haul. This is not going to be resolved quickly.”