WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has reversed President Donald Trump’s actions on immigration, climate change and many other areas during his more than three years in office.
However, high tariffs are still imposed on imports from China.
Biden not only left President Trump’s tariffs on about $300 billion worth of Chinese goods in place, but this week he threatened to triple the 7.5% tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum to 25%.
Trade experts say the move is related not only to the economy but also to the 2024 election.
In an appeal to working-class voters, Biden has signaled to the United Steelworkers union that he will listen to workers’ complaints that China has an unfair advantage in steel competition. And about what the Biden administration calls China’s manufacturing overcapacity — producing more products, including steel, than domestic demand or the world can absorb, flooding global markets at artificially low prices. , Biden has issued a warning to China.
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Doug Rediker, a senior fellow at the institute, said: “Partly because of the 2024 election, and partly because we’re telling China that we’re closely monitoring the risks of overcapacity, not just in steel but in other sectors. It’s about sending a signal.” Brookings Institution’s World Economy and Development Program.
Yellen: “China is too big for the rest of the world”
Steel imports from China account for only about 0.6% of total U.S. steel demand, meaning the tariff hike will not have a dramatic impact on the U.S. steel market.But administration officials have hinted that other potential trade moves could target other areas.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in a recent interview that the United States “will not take anything off the table” in response to China’s excess capacity.
In Beijing last week, Yellen told Chinese leaders that the United States is concerned that China’s “weak household consumption and corporate overinvestment” poses “significant risks to workers and businesses” in the United States and around the world. He said that he had informed him.
Yellen cited new technologies such as electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar panels as other areas where China is overproducing.
“China is simply too big right now for other countries to absorb this huge production capacity,” Yellen said, adding that “we’ve seen this story before” when it comes to steel.
“More than a decade ago, with massive support from the Chinese government, below-cost Chinese steel flooded the world market and devastated industries around the world and in the United States. President Biden and I will never again accept that reality. We made that clear,” Yellen said.
Biden’s U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, has criticized China in the shipbuilding sector following a petition from the United Steelworkers, which claims China is pursuing aggressive non-market policies that allow it to dominate global markets. The company plans to conduct an investigation into its trade practices.
Speaking at the United Steelworkers’ Pittsburgh headquarters this week, Biden said he would advise Tai to triple tariffs if an investigation found “anticompetitive trade practices.”
Mr. Biden’s tariff push borrows from the trade strategy of Mr. Trump, the leading Republican candidate. During his four years in office, Mr. Trump regularly raised tariffs on Chinese goods, making the country the world’s two largest economy. sparked a trade war between
“This is one of the few areas where there is policy continuity between the Trump administration and Biden in terms of being fairly tough on China on trade issues,” said Allen Carlson, an associate professor of government at Cornell University and an expert on China’s foreign policy. It’s one of the.”
However, Mr. Biden has sought to differentiate his tariff approach from his predecessor, saying that Mr. “This could cause serious damage.” Biden said Trump’s tariff plan would cost the average American household an average of $1,500 a year.
“Trump just doesn’t understand,” Biden said. “I don’t want a fight with China. I want competition, but I want fair competition.”
Election-year politics affected by tariff moves
The U.S. steel industry is reeling from plans to sell Pittsburgh-based US Steel, an iconic American brand for more than a century, to Japan-based Nippon Steel for $14.9 billion. During his presidential campaign, Biden promised that U.S. Steel would remain American-owned. Remarks in Pittsburgh.
“It will happen, I promise you,” Biden said.
Ahead of the November election, Mr. Biden is aiming to improve the Democratic Party’s performance with white working-class voters without college degrees, who have increasingly flowed into Republican camps during the Trump era.
Some unions, including the United Steelworkers, are backing Biden again, but many rank-and-file union members have rebelled against leadership and supported Trump in the past two elections.
“This is an election year, and getting tough on China is actually a win-win issue for both Republicans and Democrats,” Carlson said. “So, to me, I think this has as much to do with domestic politics, if not more, as it has to do with some kind of strategic approach to the rise of China.”
China’s steel export prices are about 40% lower than US export prices. Biden administration officials said the tariff hikes are aimed at providing a “more level playing field against China’s unfair trade practices” and protecting American jobs in the steel industry.
The higher tariffs would apply to steel and aluminum imports from China that are not subject to the 25% Trump-era tariffs still in place on some steel imports. .
Because China imports less than 1% of U.S. steel, the White House does not expect robust inflation to continue in recent months.
U.S. tariffs imposed in response to other countries’ trade practices are nearing the end of a statutory four-year review. Formal action to raise them will be taken after a review.
As Americans remain concerned about inflation, Mr. Biden is trying to make an economic case for working-class voters in key swing states in the Midwest, where both he and Mr. Trump are gaining ground. While campaigning in Pennsylvania this week, Biden compared his “Scrantonian values” to President Trump’s “Mag-a-Lago values” and accused the former president of wanting tax cuts for the wealthy. They decided that he was an out-of-touch elitist who didn’t do that. The manufacturing boom he promised never materialized.
And Mr. Biden has insisted that he, not Mr. Trump, is the president to hold China accountable.
Biden said his administration is “confronting” China’s overcapacity, reinvigorating trade links in the South Pacific and supporting peace and security in the Taiwan Strait. He told Chinese President Xi Jinping that advanced technology manufactured in the United States would not be sent to China because “it would be used for all the wrong purposes” and would undermine U.S. national security. I looked back on that.
“Despite all these tough talks on China, my predecessor never would have thought to do something like that,” Biden said.
Contact Joey Garrison at X (formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison)
