{"id":1601068,"date":"2022-08-11T11:39:27","date_gmt":"2022-08-11T15:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1601068"},"modified":"2022-08-11T11:39:41","modified_gmt":"2022-08-11T15:39:41","slug":"exclusive-u-s-rethinks-steps-on-china-tariffs-in-wake-of-taiwan-response-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/exclusive-u-s-rethinks-steps-on-china-tariffs-in-wake-of-taiwan-response-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive \u2013 U.S. rethinks steps on China tariffs in wake of Taiwan response \u2013 sources"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fexclusive-u-s-rethinks-steps-on-china-tariffs-in-wake-of-taiwan-response-sources%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1601068&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>By Jeff Mason and David Lawder<\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) \u2013     China\u2019s war games around Taiwan have led Biden administration officials to recalibrate their thinking on whether to scrap some tariffs or potentially impose others on Beijing, setting those options aside for now, according to sources familiar with the deliberations.<\/p>\n<p>President Joe Biden\u2019s team has been wrestling for months with various ways to ease the costs of duties imposed on Chinese imports during predecessor Donald Trump\u2019s tenure, as it tries to tamp down skyrocketing inflation. <\/p>\n<p>It has considered a combination of eliminating some tariffs, launching a new \u201cSection 301\u201d investigation into potential areas for additional tariffs, and expanding a list of tariff exclusions to aid U.S. companies that can only get certain supplies from China.<\/p>\n<p>Biden has not made a decision on the issue and all options remain on the table, the White House said. <\/p>\n<p>The tariffs make Chinese imports more expensive for U.S. companies, which, in turn, make products cost more for consumers. Bringing down inflation is a major goal for Biden, a Democrat, ahead of the November midterm elections, which could shift control of one or both houses of Congress to Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>But Beijing\u2019s response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s visit last week to Taiwan triggered a recalculation by administration officials, who are eager not to do anything that could be viewed by China as an escalation while also seeking to avoid being seen as retreating in the face of the communist country\u2019s aggression.<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s military for days took part in ballistic missile launches and simulated attacks on the self-ruled island of Taiwan that China claims as its own.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think Taiwan has changed everything,\u201d said one source familiar with the latest developments in the process, details of which have not been previously reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe president had not made a decision before events in the Taiwan Strait and has still not made a decision, period. Nothing has been shelved or put on hold, and all options remain on the table,\u201d said White House spokesperson Saloni Sharma. \u201cThe only person who will make the decision is the president \u2013 and he will do so based on what is in our interests.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asked why a decision was taking so long, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo referred to the complicated geopolitical situation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter Speaker Pelosi\u2019s visit to Taiwan, it\u2019s particularly complicated. So the president is weighing his options. He is very cautious. He wants to make sure that we don\u2019t do anything which would hurt American labor and American workers,\u201d she said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. <\/p>\n<p>EXCLUSIONS LIST<\/p>\n<p>With the most forceful measures regarding tariff relief and tariff escalation largely on the back burner for now, focus is on the so-called exclusions list.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration had approved tariff exclusions for more than 2,200 import categories, including many critical industrial components and chemicals, but those expired as Biden took office in January 2021. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai has reinstated only 352 of them. Industry groups and more than 140 U.S. lawmakers have urged her to vastly increase the numbers.<\/p>\n<p>The Biden administration\u2019s next steps could have a significant impact on hundreds of billions of dollars of trade between the world\u2019s two largest economies.  <\/p>\n<p>U.S. industries from consumer electronics and retailers to automotive and aerospace have been clamoring for Biden to eliminate the duties of up to 25% as they struggle with rising costs and tight supplies.<\/p>\n<p>The tariffs were imposed in 2018 and 2019 by Trump on thousands of Chinese imports valued then at $370 billion to pressure China over its suspected theft of U.S. intellectual property.<\/p>\n<p>Some senior administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, had argued the duties were imposed on \u201cnon-strategic\u201d consumer goods that had unnecessarily raised costs for consumers and businesses, and removing them could help ease rampant inflation. Tai argued the tariffs were \u201csignificant leverage\u201d that should be used to press China for changes to its behavior.<\/p>\n<p>MULTIPLE FACTORS<\/p>\n<p>Multiple factors, in addition to China\u2019s Taiwan response, have complicated the administration\u2019s deliberations.<\/p>\n<p>As U.S. officials considered getting rid of some of the tariffs, they sought reciprocal rollbacks from Beijing and were rebuffed, two sources said. <\/p>\n<p>One of the sources, who said a unilateral removal of some U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports has been put on hold, said this was done in part because China failed to show any willingness to take reciprocal actions or meet its \u201cPhase 1\u201d trade deal commitments.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said economic and trade relations between the two countries faced \u201csevere\u201d challenges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe (Pelosi) visit has undermined the political foundation of the China-US relations and will inevitably cause major disruption to the exchanges and cooperation between the two sides,\u201d Liu Pengyu said in an email to Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>The trade deal, reached at the end of 2019 with the Trump administration, required China to increase its purchases of U.S. farm and manufactured goods, energy and services by $200 billion in 2020 and 2021 over 2017 levels. China fell well short of these commitments, which included a $77.7 billion two-year increase in imports of U.S. manufactured goods, including aircraft, machinery, vehicles and pharmaceuticals. <\/p>\n<p>The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that China effectively bought none of the extra goods it promised. Beijing blamed the COVID-19 pandemic, which began just as the deal was signed in January 2020.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Trade Representative\u2019s office is now in the midst of a statutory four-year review of the tariffs imposed by Trump, which could take a few more months to complete. Final public comments on whether to keep them in place are due by Aug. 23.<\/p>\n<p>Union groups led by the United Steelworkers have urged USTR to keep the tariffs on Chinese goods in place to help \u201clevel the playing field\u201d for workers in the United States and reduce U.S. reliance on Chinese suppliers.<\/p>\n<p>Biden has been concerned about rolling back tariffs in part because of labor, which is a key constituency for him, and because of China\u2019s failure to buy the products it had agreed to purchase, according to the first source. The White House has declined to lay out a timeline for when a final decision will be made.<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Jeff Mason and David Lawder; editing by Heather Timmons and Grant McCool)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2736543\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI790YS-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI790YS-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2736544\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI790YC-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI790YC-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jeff Mason and David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) \u2013 China\u2019s war games around Taiwan have led Biden administration officials to recalibrate their thinking on whether to scrap some tariffs or<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":1889020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1601068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_finder_url":"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/exclusive-u-s-rethinks-2\/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=exclusive-u-s-rethinks-2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1601068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1889020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1601068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1601068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1601068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}