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Biden considers lifting China tariffs slapped by Trump

Tuesday, 12 July 2022 6:20 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 12 July 2022 6:20 PM ]

This photo taken on November 15, 2021 shows US President Joe Biden in the White House in Washington, DC during an online virtual meeting with China's President Xi Jinping. (File photo by AFP)

US President Joe Biden has been mulling over lifting Trump-era tariffs slapped on Chinese imports while concerns over midterms elections loom.

Biden wants to show that he is doing all he can to fight record inflation without appearing soft on China in the run-up to the midterm elections, according to The Hill.

On one hand, lifting the China tariffs is one of the only options at Biden’s disposal to try to lower the price of everyday goods.

On the other hand, lifting the tariffs would have very little impact on decreasing the costs of food and fuel, experts say.

Also, labor unions support for the China tariffs is another key factor for Biden, who on the campaign trail vowed to be the most pro-labor president in US history.

In addition, experts say lifting China tariffs ahead of his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which is expected to take place this month, would be politically and strategically risky and make Biden look weak in eyes of Beijing as well as the American voters making it a perilous move ahead of November’s midterm elections.

In order to simultaneously appease both the White House advisers and the potential midterm voters, Biden is expected to lift China tariffs on a relatively tiny fraction of the imports: as little as $10 billion worth of Chinese products out of the roughly $350 billion in goods slapped with tariffs by the former president, Trump.

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“You have some Cabinet officials who don’t want to do anything that’s seen as helping China in any way, and you’ve got others concerned more with the economy, saying that tariffs haven’t really achieved any strategic objective,” said David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “So this seems like a compromise, but it’s weighted very much toward mostly keeping the tariffs.”

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