The Biden administration on Friday announced measures that will add tariffs to Chinese products worth tens of billions of dollars, a move intended to both protect American factories and project a tough-on-China approach ahead of the presidential election.
The tariffs, which range from 7.5 percent to 100 percent, will apply to clothing, solar panels, electric vehicles, syringes, steel and other goods that China has been selling at far cheaper prices than many American businesses, threatening to put U.S. factories out of business.
The steps are likely to raise the cost of some imports at a time when Americans are already dissatisfied with rising prices. But they also represent a major effort by the Biden administration to address a salient political issue for some voters: America’s dependence on China for an array of products.
Both Democrats and Republicans have turned away from emphasizing the benefits of freer trade to criticizing the role that Chinese imports have played in hollowing out American manufacturing and damaging communities centered around those factories. This week, Vice President Kamala Harris sparred with former President Donald J. Trump over the impact of tariffs, and Republican lawmakers proposed several new laws aimed at reducing China’s economic influence.
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One of the measures the Biden administration proposed would drastically limit a trade rule, called de minimis, that allowed more than one billion packages from China to enter the United States last year without being subject to existing tariffs. The administration said a flood of shipments under the rule had hurt American manufacturers and allowed products like fentanyl and counterfeit goods to come into the country.
The trade rule allows packages to be shipped from foreign countries directly to consumers or businesses without paying tariffs, as long as the shipments do not exceed $800 per recipient per day. The new proposal would strip that exemption from a wide array of products and is likely to have a significant impact on large exporters of Chinese goods such as Shein and Temu, two online marketplaces that have become popular with American shoppers.
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