President Biden is looking for ways to protect the emerging U.S. clean energy sector from a surge in cheap Chinese imports, and the Biden administration is expected to impose new restrictions on Chinese-made electric vehicles and other products as soon as next week, according to people familiar with the matter. The company plans to announce tariffs. .
The move could undermine Biden’s efforts to boost domestic manufacturing of clean energy products by China, which is flooding global markets with products such as cheap solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles. The move was carried out amid growing concerns within the administration that the move may be inappropriate.
The long-awaited tariffs are the result of a four-year review of tariffs that former President Donald J. Trump imposed on more than $300 billion of Chinese imports in 2018. Most of the Trump tariffs are expected to remain in place, but Biden plans to go beyond them by raising levies on areas where the president funneled subsidies in the 2022 Inflation Control Act. .
This includes electric vehicles from China, which currently face a 25% tariff. The government is expected to further increase this tax rate to make purchasing EVs in China prohibitively expensive. The administration is considering tariffs of up to 100%, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
Earlier this year, Biden took steps to block internet-connected Chinese cars and trucks, including electric vehicles, from entering the U.S. auto market, saying their operating systems could transmit sensitive information to the Chinese government. He said it posed a risk to national security because of its nature.
The president has said he wants to increase pressure on China and show he will protect U.S. manufacturing ahead of a showdown with Trump in the November presidential election.
Since Biden took office, the fate of tariffs on China has been the subject of intense debate within the White House, with economic and political advisers often clashing over how to proceed. But this year, China began ramping up production of the same products the Biden administration has invested billions of dollars to start producing in the United States: electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar panels. Beijing’s actions have reignited trade tensions between the two countries, forcing Biden to push for more aggressive trade restrictions.
Trump has said he would escalate the trade war with China if re-elected, saying earlier this year that he was considering imposing tariffs of more than 60% on Chinese imports.
It’s unclear how much tariffs the Biden administration is expected to apply to Chinese electric vehicles, batteries and solar products. The planned publication of the review, which is being conducted by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, was previously reported by Bloomberg News.
Some Democrats, including Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, are calling on the Biden administration to take more drastic steps to protect the U.S. auto industry. Last month, Mr. Brown called for a ban on Chinese-made electric cars from the United States, saying they posed an “existential threat” to American automakers, and on Friday said import duties were insufficient.
“Tariffs are not enough,” Brown wrote on social media platform X. “We need to ban Chinese-made EVs from entering the United States. Period.”
Biden said last month that he was asking the trade representative to also raise tariffs on imported steel and aluminum products from China as part of the review. The president and his aides have accused China of selling heavy metals around the world at artificially low prices to eat into market share, to the detriment of U.S. producers.
“My Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is investigating the Chinese government’s trade practices in steel and aluminum,” Biden told steelworkers in Pittsburgh. “If the investigation confirms these anti-competitive trade practices, we urge her to consider tripling tariffs on both steel and aluminum imports from China.”
The president added, “I don’t want a fight with China. I want competition, and fair competition.”
The possibility of the US imposing new tariffs on China sparked criticism in Beijing on Friday. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said the Trump administration’s tariffs had “severely disrupted normal trade and economic exchanges between China and the United States” and violated World Trade Organization rules.
“Instead of ending these wrong practices, the United States continues to politicize trade issues, abuse the so-called review process of Tariff 301, and plan to raise tariffs,” Lin said. He stated this by referring to the legal provisions that are used to achieve this goal. Tariff. “China will take all necessary measures to protect its rights and interests.”
In 2020, under the Trump administration, the United States and China agreed to a comprehensive “Phase 1” trade agreement that allowed the two countries to review bilateral tariffs after four years. The bilateral agreement remains in effect, but the United States postponed the outcome of the review when it expired in January for four years.
The deal would likely give the U.S. government more freedom to raise tariffs. Initially, the Chinese government never adhered to the agreement’s specific goals regarding China’s imports of U.S. goods, citing the outbreak of the pandemic. After that, he promoted a policy of switching imported goods to domestic production.
The European Union is also considering new tariffs on imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles, and the expected actions of the U.S. government will He pointed out that the results were as follows. China’s persistently aggressive trade policy. He said that without higher tariffs, the U.S. auto sector will not be able to compete with heavily subsidized Chinese electric vehicles.
“If you look at the impact of China’s long-standing policies on EVs, they’re producing far more EVs than they can absorb,” Paisch said. “We really want to get high enough to make sure we can counter the trends that we’re seeing.”
keith bradshire Contributed to the report.
