A group of US retailer associations is arguing that tariffs on Chinese goods are hurting business. Seven groups, including the National Retail Federation (NRF), filed a brief with the US Court of International Trade on Monday in support of US businesses negatively affected by China tariffs.
The brief supports a lawsuit filed by over 6,000 plaintiffs in September 2020 against the tariffs that have been implemented since 2018. “Thousands of American businesses have been forced to pay these taxes to import Chinese goods and products, which ultimately results in higher prices for US consumers,” NRF said in a press release on the brief.
“The Biden administration has kept these tariffs in place when American businesses are doing their best to safely serve customers and keep workers on their payrolls during the pandemic,” the release said.
US business groups have been urging the Biden administration to change its trade policy towards China since the cost of the tariffs falls on US importers, retailers, and consumers. Last week, more than 30 US industry groups sent a letter to the Biden administration calling for the US and China to resume trade talks with the eventual goal of the “full removal of tariffs.”
The letter argued that since the signing of the Phase One trade deal in January 2020, China has “met important benchmarks and commitments that benefit American businesses, farmers, ranchers, and workers.”
In a statement on the letter to The South China Morning Post, a spokesman for the US Trade Representative pointed to the growth of the US economy this year and signaled the Biden administration was in no rush to ease tariffs or enter new trade talks.
“As we make historic infrastructure investments and Build Back Better, we are conducting a robust, strategic review of our economic relationship with China to create effective policy that delivers results for American workers, farmers, and businesses and puts them in a stronger position to compete with China and the rest of the world,” the spokesman said.
China is one issue where there is a rare bipartisan consensus in Washington. Democrats and Republicans agree the US must take action against China on trade and other issues, like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and the South China Sea.
Is ChinaMart, I mean Walmart, running out of cheap Chinese crap? Good! Not like I have bought anything there for months. Tell them to feel free to move their whole company and ugly, dirty stores to China too!
Shelves are running low at all U.S. stores. I’m sure U.S. factories will ramp up production to catch up – at about 4-5 times the current price!
If economic protectionism can be sold better as imperialism and foreign policy bullying, then that’s good. We should also be taxing fossil fuel use worldwide to fund safety net and climate disruption mitigation. Commodities from China often involve forced labor and polluting, inefficient factories. Then they are shipped using more fossil fuels to the opposite side of the world, through increasingly strained and vulnerable canal choke points. Even without wars or extreme weather becoming a factor, it’s increasingly clear that this system is strained and unstable, while contributing to more stress and instability every step of the way. That will certainly be hurtful for business.
I’m sure the US companies took everything you say into consideration when they moved their factories to China.
Forced labor is just propaganda. With regards to inefficiency if they were inefficient they couldn’t compete
Could be I guess, but HRW and Amnesty are credible sources to me and they seem to think prison and otherwise forced labor is extensively used in China. How else could they make so much stuff so cheap? Of course this happens in the US also. https://www.hrw.org/reports/1992/WR92/ASW-05.htm
Inefficiency is structural, because we don’t value all the factors that matter including carbon emissions and air quality. Nearly 60% of China’s electricity comes from coal, as one example. Is it efficient for microchips to almost exclusively come from one part of the world, which is disrupting assembly lines all over the place now because of their shortage? In some ways it’s sometimes efficient, right now it’s totally not.
The thing is hrw waited a gazillion years to call Israel an apartheid and only did it when a courageous Israel ngo did it first, also look at how they tried to make false equivalence between Israeli aggression and Palestinian resistance. Bothe amnesty and hrw rely heavily on western donors and have taken western intelligence analysis or mic dependent think tank analysis on face value that’s why I kinda doubt things they say. China has large population base alongside competent structures and by becoming the world’s factory they also enjoy tremendous economy of scale so it is possible for them to provide even labor intensive goods cheaply without using forced labor
Without a doubt there might be issues regarding labor rights and some firms might even subcontract to North Korea and thus party to slave labor arrangements but this is more to do with action rogue firms rather than state sponsored actions