U.S. proposes more tariffs on China
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is readying tariffs on another $200 billion in Chinese imports, ranging from burglar alarms to mackerel, escalating a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative proposed 10 percent tariffs Tuesday on a list of 6,031 Chinese product lines.
The office will accept public comments and hold hearings on the plan Aug. 20-23 before reaching a decision after Aug. 31, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
Last Friday, the U.S. imposed 25 percent tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese products, and Beijing responded by hitting the same amount of U.S. imports.
The administration said the new levies are a response to China’s decision to retaliate against the first round of U.S. tariffs.
President Donald Trump has threatened to tax as much as $550 billion in Chinese products — an amount that exceeds America’s total importsfrom China last year.
The United States complains that China uses predatory practices in a push to challenge American technological dominance. Chinese tactics, the administration says, include outright cybertheft and forcing U.S. companies to hand over technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market.
The initial U.S. tariff list focused on Chinese industrial products in an attempt to limit the impact on American consumers. By expanding the list, the administration is beginning to hit products that U.S. households buy, including such things as televisions, clothing, refrigerators, bedsheets, air conditioners, electric lamps and fish sticks. But the proposed list omitted some high-profile products like mobile phones.
“Tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese products amounts to another multibillion-dollar tax on American businesses and families,” said Scott Lincicome, a trade lawyer and senior policy analyst for the group Republicans Fighting Tariffs. “Given China’s likelihood of retaliation, it’s also billions worth of new tariffs on American exporters.”
The new tariffs will not be imposed until the end of a two-month public comment period.
The president has repeatedly described his resort to tariffs — which are paid by American importers — as a lever to extract negotiating concessions from U.S. trading partners, and U.S. officials say they remain willing to bargain. But a senior administration official who briefed reporters Tuesday on the condition that he not be identified added: “We do intend to keep the pressure on them.”
The senior administration official blamed China for the intensifying commercial conflict between two nations that account for roughly 40 percent of the global economy.
“They were the ones who started everything by hurting us,” the official said.
Tuesday’s announcement included a 205-page public notice and list of the individual products that could be hit by the new 10-percent tariffs.
The office of Robert Lighthizer — the president’s chief trade negotiator who said China’s retaliation to Friday’s measures was “without any international legal basis or justification” — plans four days of public hearings on the trade actions starting August 20.
Members of Congress are increasingly questioning Mr. Trump’s aggressive trade policies, warning that tariffs on imports raise prices for consumers and expose U.S. farmers and manufacturers to retaliation abroad.
“Tonight’s announcement appears reckless and is not a targeted approach,” Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a statement. “We cannot turn a blind eye to China’s mercantilist trade practices, but this action falls short of a strategy that will give the administration negotiating leverage with China while maintaining the long-term health and prosperity of the American economy.”
Beijing, meanwhile, has unveiled measures to help Chinese companies absorb the U.S. trade blows, pledging to funnel money collected from its own import levies to firms and workers tangled in the escalating trade war.
Chinese officials also encouraged businesses to reduce their reliance on U.S. goods, urging them to shift orders for products such as soybeans and automobiles to suppliers in China or countries other than the United States.
“For companies that are severely impacted, we suggest they report to local government departments,” the Commerce Ministry said in a statement Monday.
Also on Tuesday, China stepped up action against some U.S. goods by announcing anti-dumping duties on raw materials used in making optical fibers.
Optical fiber preforms from the United States and Japan will face additional duties of 37.9 to 78.2 percent for five years, the Ministry of Commerce announced.
Chinese leaders have emphasized the benefits to foreign companies from trading with the world’s secondlargest economy in an effort to deflect pressure to change industrial plans communist leaders see as a route to prosperity and global influence.
On Monday, Chinese and German companies including BASF and Volkswagen signed business deals worth 20 billion euros ($23.6 billion) during a visit to Berlin by China’s No. 2 leader, Premier Li Keqiang.
But European companies that export from China also are changing the global flow of their goods to avoid higher American tariffs, a business group said Tuesday, as the impact of the U.S.Chinese trade war spreads.
Tariff hikes are “hitting immediately the bottom line” of companies that rely on the free flow of trade across countries, said Mats Harborn, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.