Tariffs must be part of the toolkit to manage the influx of products from Chinese tech companies, whether from e-commerce platforms like Temu or from a growing number of low-cost microchip manufacturers set to flood the global market with semiconductors.
In a recent speech at the New York Economic Club, and again during Tuesday’s debate against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump revived one of his signature policy proposals: tariffs as a powerful tool to revive American industry, protect jobs, and generate revenue for the federal government.
The Tax Foundation bills itself as the “world’s leading nonpartisan tax policy nonprofit”, but they do not understand the basic concepts of how tariffs work — or even what they are.
Trump said he wanted the U.S. “to be the manufacturing superpower in the world. We can do that intelligently with trade policy that uses tariffs that encourages production here. We deserve it.”
The U.S. goods and services trade deficit rose 7.9% for the month of July, but the goods deficit alone hit a record for the year – $103.13 billion. The previous high was in May at $100.1 billion.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was asked to impose anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) on Southeast Asian solar companies in a letter from the United Steelworkers Union (USW) on Aug. 27.
If anyone needed yet another example of the importance of China miners and processing companies, Beijing said it would put restrictions on exports of antimony and processing equipment used in batteries and as an alloy to increase a metal’s strength.
Hofusan is one of the most well known investments of Chinese capital looking not only to sell to Mexican consumers, but – more obviously – to export everything from furniture to washing machines duty free to the United States.
Little has been said about what a Kamala Harris trade agenda would look like should she win in November, but new clues have emerged, and it seems fairly certain she would keep with the current trajectory of the Biden administration.
China has wiped out American solar before. Can they do it again? This is the concern among many on Capitol Hill, including in the White House.
