Electric cars and semiconductors: Washington detailed on Friday the customs duty increases announced in May by Joe Biden and targeting “strategic” Chinese products, a source of tension between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris less than two months before the American presidential election.
Electric cars imported from China to the United States will be taxed at 100% from September 27, electric vehicle batteries at 25%, and solar panel cells at 50%. For semiconductors, it will be 50%, from September 1er January 2025.
These tariff increases were announced on May 14 by Joe Biden. On Friday, a document of about a hundred pages detailing the products concerned, the tax rate, and the dates on which these increases come into effect, was published by the services of the Trade Representative (USTR).
They will “target China’s harmful policies and practices that continue to harm American workers and businesses,” US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement.
These additional taxes will be applied to the equivalent of 18 billion dollars of Chinese products from sectors considered “strategic”.
“These actions underscore the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to defending American workers and businesses from unfair trade practices,” Tai said.
Election
The subject is eminently political, less than two months before a very close presidential election.
Especially since this new series of customs duties is a continuation of those that were put in place by Donald Trump when he was president, and were largely maintained by the Joe Biden administration.
On Tuesday, during the televised debate, his rival in the race for the White House, current Vice President Kamala Harris, also criticized him for having, when he was president, “launched economic wars”, both with China and with the European Union.
The former Republican president retorted that the Democratic Biden-Harris administration “never took away the tariffs because it was so much money they couldn’t do it.”
Donald Trump intends, if elected, to raise customs duties again, to the tune of “more than 10%”, or even 20% for imports from certain countries.
Kamala Harris has denounced a “consumption tax” that will ultimately weigh on the American consumer.
“Cheat”
The USTR clarified in its statement that “the proposed changes in May 2024 [par Joe Biden] were widely adopted” in the final version.
The statement, however, noted “several adjustments to strengthen actions to protect American businesses and workers from China’s unfair trade practices after reviewing more than 1,100 public comments.”
China is ‘cheating’ but ‘we are not going to’ [la] “Let our market be flooded,” Joe Biden promised in May, when he announced this new round of customs duties targeting Chinese products.
“We will never let China control the market” for electric cars, he added, judging it “impossible for [nos] car manufacturers to compete honestly.”
The US government also announced on Friday that it was tackling the “excessive use and abuse” of a mechanism that allows lower-value imports to enter the United States duty-free, regardless of their country of origin.
Some 140 million packages from around the world entered the United States annually under this exemption a decade ago, compared to more than a billion now.
According to U.S. authorities, the increase in volume is due to the growth of Chinese retailers Shein and Temu, known for selling low-cost products directly from China.
US authorities are therefore seeking to exclude certain products from these customs duty exemptions, a decision which could have an impact on the majority of Chinese textile and clothing imports.