US President Donald Trump is seeking to impose tariffs on up to US$60 billion of Chinese imports and would target the technology and telecommunications sectors, two people who had discussed the issue with the Trump administration said on Tuesday.
A third source who had direct knowledge of the US administration’s thinking said that the tariffs, associated with a “Section 301” intellectual property investigation, under the 1974 US Trade Act, begun in August last year, could come “in the very near future.”
While the tariffs would be chiefly targeted at information technology, consumer electronics and telecoms, they could be much broader and the list could eventually run to 100 products, the person said.
Photo: AFP
The White House declined to comment on the size or timing of any move.
However, China yesterday said that US-China trade relations should not be a zero-sum game.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) told a daily news briefing that China would take firm measures to safeguard its legitimate trade rights.
Trump is targeting Chinese high-technology companies to punish China for its investment policies that effectively force US companies to give up their technology secrets in exchange for being allowed to operate in the country, as well as for other intellectual property practices Washington considers unfair.
The Trump administration is also considering imposing investment restrictions on Chinese companies over and above the heightened national security restrictions, but details on these were not immediately known.
However, lobbyists in Washington expressed concern that Trump’s ambitious tariff plan would also include other labor-intensive consumer goods sectors such as apparel, footwear and toys.
Higher tariffs on these products would “hurt American families,” Retail Industry Leaders Association trade lobbyist Hun Quach said.
“We’re not talking about fancy cashmere sweaters, we’re talking about cotton T-shirts and jeans and shoes that kids wear for back-to-school,” she said. “Alarm bells are ringing.”
While the tariffs on steel and aluminum, announced last week by Trump, are viewed as relatively insignificant in terms of imports and exports, moves to target China directly risk a direct and harsh response from Beijing.
“If this is serious, the Chinese will retaliate. The key question is, does the US retaliate against that retaliation,” said Derek Scissors, a China trade expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-business think tank.
That would spook stock markets, but Scissors said that the more serious the conflict became, the worse China’s position would become, due to the importance of its US trade surplus.
The news Web site Politico had earlier reported that the US Trade Representative’s office last week presented Trump with a package of US$30 billion in tariffs, but Trump told aides that this was not high enough.
One Washington business source who had discussed the issue with the White House said the figure had now grown to about US$60 billion, with a potentially wider array of products under consideration.
A second person, who is an industry lobbyist in Washington familiar with the US administration’s thinking, said the process was being led by Peter Navarro, an avowed protectionist, and by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who also favors tariffs as a tool to rebalance trade.
US business groups, while uneasy about triggering Chinese retaliation, have increasingly pressed Washington to take action on Beijing’s industrial policies, such as market access restrictions and the “Made in China 2025” plan, which aims to supplant foreign technologies with domestic ones.
Shortly after Trump took office, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a US technology think tank whose board includes representatives from top companies such as Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Intel Corp, called for coordinated international pressure on Beijing.
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