US To Continue Section 301 Tariffs On Chinese Goods

On September 2nd, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) issued a statement saying that the billions in Section 301 tariffs on China-made goods will remain in place while her office reviews whether to keep them for another four years. The decision was made after her office reviewed the formal requests sent in from representatives of the US domestic industries.

 This policy was initiated by the Trump administration on July 6th, 2018, when President Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on $34 billion worth of Chinese imports for the first time. The U.S. law provides that tariffs automatically lapse after four years of imposition, unless the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative receives a request from a beneficiary to continue imposing tariffs and analyzes their effectiveness and consequences. 

 Back on May 3rd of this year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced that the four-year old action to impose Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports to would end on July 6 of this year. Effective immediately, the Office initiated a statutory review of the action. Industry representatives have until July 6 to petition the Office to uphold the tariffs imposed. The office will review the tariffs based on the application and will maintain them during the review period. Since then, the office has received hundreds of requests from domestic industry representatives to retain tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States.

 While under tremendous pressure from the globalists in the Biden administration, Ms. Tai has represented the small group of economic nationalists. 

 According to a 2019 study by Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA), it was found that a 25 percent permanent U.S. tariff on all Chinese imports would create more than 1 million jobs for the U.S. over five years, while each manufacturing job supported 7.4 additional jobs in other U.S. industries.