Biden continues tariffs on Chinese goods and adds new tariffs on clean energy parts.
WASHINGTON — Five years after ridiculing predecessor Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, President Joe Biden on Tuesday added new ones on $18 billion of imports to protect American clean energy manufacturers.
American importers of Chinese solar panels, batteries, semiconductors, and permanent magnets will have to pay a 25% tax when they bring them into the country — costs that are eventually passed along to consumers. Chinese electric vehicles will face a 100% tax.
“The fact is American workers can outwork and outcompete anyone, as long as the competition is fair. But for too long, it hasn’t been fair,” Biden said during a Rose Garden announcement that featured officials from both manufacturers and unions. “For years, the Chinese government has poured state money into Chinese companies across the whole range of industry ― steel, aluminum, semiconductors, electric vehicles, solar panels, the industries of the future.”
Running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, Biden attacked Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products as counterproductive and shortsighted. “President Trump may think he’s being tough on China. All that he’s delivered as a consequence of that is American farmers, manufacturers, and consumers losing and paying more,” he said then. “His economic decision-making is so shortsighted and as shortsighted as the rest of his foreign policy.”
On Tuesday, Biden said China was violating international trade rules by subsidizing their domestic manufacturers of steel, aluminum, computer chips, solar panels, lithium batteries, and medical supplies and then dumping those goods into the world market to depress prices and drive foreign manufacturers out of business.
Biden said he addressed this in conversations with China’s leader and also complained about other demands the nation imposes on American imports. “I spent a lot of time with Xi Jinping. Early on I told him: Why am I being unfair with China? I said, look, we’ll play by the same rules if you want. If you want to do business in China, you’ve got to have a 51% Chinese owner, you’ve got to provide access to all your intellectual property, etc.,” he said. “You want to do that in America? Silence.”
The coup-attempting former president — who is currently on trial of charges that he falsified business records to hide a hush money payment to a porn star — outside his New York City courtroom told reporters that Biden’s tariffs were not enough and again attacked Biden for promoting electric vehicles. “They should have done it a long time ago, because China is eating our lunch right now,” he said.
Biden, asked about the “eating our lunch” comment after he signed the order implementing the new tariffs, said of Trump: “He’s been feeding them a long time.”
Biden’s chief of trade policy, Katherine Tai, said tariffs on $300 billion imposed during the Trump administration on a wide range of goods were reviewed over the past three years but ultimately left in place because China had not stopped or even reduced its intellectual property theft and other abuses.
Trump had imposed the tariffs on items ranging from electronics to toys to furniture to pressure China into stopping the trade abuses as well as buying more American agricultural products. The tariffs accomplished neither, however.
Tai said the new tariffs were specifically targeted to help the United States’ clean energy transition without being beholden to a foreign power.
“They are designed to be strategic, not chaotic,” she said Tuesday about the new tariffs. “They are designed to be effective, not emotional.”
Tai said the new tariff schedule would be formalized in the coming days, when she would also set an effective date.
U.S. President Joe Biden is applauded by union members after signing orders that increase tariffs on China to promote American investments and jobs in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 14 in Washington, D.C.
Win McNamee via Getty Images
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