US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) defended stiff tariff hikes against countries such as China, saying that paired with investment, they were a “legitimate and constructive” tool for reinvigorating domestic industries.
Tai’s comments come a week after sharp tariff increases on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), EV batteries and solar cells took effect — with levies down the line on other products also recently finalized.
The latest moves targeting US$18 billion in Chinese goods come weeks before next month’s US presidential election, with Democrats and Republicans pushing a hard line on China as competition between Washington and Beijing intensifies.
Photo: AFP
In an interview on Thursday looking back on her term, Tai defended the use of tariffs as a means “to counterbalance unfair trade” with China.
The latest hikes, she added, aim to help US clean energy investments “take root.”
“We wanted to make sure that those increased areas are paired with the investments that we’re making,” Tai said, referring to efforts to build domestic industries, such as those for EVs, batteries and semiconductors.
“Once you’ve lost an industry, bringing it back from the brink is much, much harder,” she said.
The US manufacturing industry has declined in recent decades, a period that saw production shift offshore and heightened competition from China.
China’s share of global manufacturing output has been about 30 percent, significantly above the US and other developed countries.
Tai said that while the US has seen new manufacturing investment, “in order to bring manufacturing back across the board, it is going to take more time.”
However, she stressed that Washington is not aiming to bring all production back on its shores, but to recover from earlier “levels of erosion.”
US President Joe Biden has largely maintained tariffs imposed by former US president Donald Trump, which affected some US$300 billion in goods from China. The hikes this year include earlier products and some additional ones.
An estimate by think tank the Tax Foundation in June noted the cumulative impact of tariffs would “reduce long-run GDP by 0.2 percent.”
Further increases proposed by Trump, the Republican Party’s nominee for president, could “shrink GDP by at least 0.8 percent,” the foundation added.
Tai, who has held office for more than three years, is also hopeful that Washington would reach new deals with European partners — referring to ongoing talks on critical minerals.
A key factor in negotiations on a critical minerals deal has been labor standards and how these would be upheld.
“I remain very, very optimistic that we will be able to achieve these kinds of new agreements that put workers at their center,” she said.
She sounded a positive note on steel and aluminum talks as well.
Biden has paused Trump-era tariffs on most European steel and aluminum in favor of quotas allowing some imports without levies, but both sides face a complicated task in resolving an impasse.
This is because they are also pushing for the decarbonization of industries and to combat non-market practices from parties such as China.
“We’re not just trying to accomplish more trade. We’re trying to accomplish better trade,” Tai said.
She pointed to the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which allows enforcement actions against factories over labor violations, as an example of “worker-centered trade.”
She added that Washington wants to “expand the conversation beyond North America” and to Europe.
However, the trade chief’s term has seen challenges including a snag with the trade pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity — a pact involving Asia-Pacific partners — amid labor concerns.
Tai pushed back on the view that labor provisions alone have caused “insurmountable challenges,” saying countries are still making progress this year.
She added that Washington remains present in the region: “We are there, we have been, we are engaging.”
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS