Some of the steep US tariff increases on an array of Chinese imports, including electric vehicles (EVs) and their batteries, computer chips and medical products, would take effect on Aug. 1, the US Trade Representative’s office said yesterday.
US President Joe Biden would keep tariffs put in place by former US president Donald Trump while ratcheting up others, including a quadrupling of import duties on Chinese EVs to more than 100 percent and a doubling of semiconductor duties to 50 percent.
The trade agency said in a federal notice that a 30-day public comment period would close on June 28.
A container ship is berthed at the Pacific International Container Terminal of the Port of Tianjin in China on Wednesday last week.
It is seeking comments on the effects of the proposed tariff increase on the US economy, including consumers, and on whether a proposed 25 percent duty on medical masks, gloves and syringes should be higher.
The notice also provides specific tariff codes for 387 product categories affected, along with new duty rates and implementation dates.
Tariffs starting next year and in 2026 would start on Jan. 1 for those years, the trade agency said.
The proposed Chinese tariff increases include “products targeted by China for dominance, or are products in sectors where the United States has recently made significant investments,” it said.
Washington is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy tax subsidies to develop EV, solar and other new industries, and has said that China’s state-driven excess production capacity in these sectors threatens the viability of US firms.
The tariffs are meant to protect US jobs from a feared flood of cheap Chinese imports.
The new measures would affect US$18 billion in imported Chinese goods, including steel and aluminum, semiconductors, EVs, critical minerals, solar cells and cranes, the White House said.
The EV figure might have more of a political than a practical impact in the US, which imports few Chinese EVs because of prior vehicle tariffs.
The largest two categories, making up US$13.2 billion of the targeted imports from China last year, are lithium-ion batteries, US Census Bureau trade data showed.
Duties of 25 percent are due to start in 2026 on the US$10.9 billion non-vehicle lithium-ion battery category, which has grown quickly and is the third-largest US import category from China after smartphones and personal computers.
The US imported US$427 billion in goods from China last year and exported US$148 billion to the world’s No. 2 economy, a trade gap that has persisted for decades and become an ever more sensitive subject in Washington.
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) has said the revised tariffs were justified because China was stealing US intellectual property.
Tai has also recommended tariff exclusions for hundreds of industrial machinery import categories from China, including solar product manufacturing equipment.
China has denounced the tariff hikes and vowed “resolute measures” to protect its interests.
On Sunday, Beijing announced a new anti-dumping probe on certain industrial plastics from Taiwan, the US, Europe and Japan.
The trade agency said it would provide details on how companies could apply for machinery exclusions from the tariffs in a separate notice.
However, it said that any exclusions granted would be backdated to start yesterday and end on May 31 next year.
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
RSS