About 150 business trade groups signed a joint letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer Thursday urging that the Trump administration not go ahead with planned tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. The administration is reportedly planning on instituting them as early as next week.
“Continuing the tit-for-tat tariff escalation with China only serves to expand the harm to more U.S. economic interests, including farmers, families, businesses, and workers,” the groups said in the letter. “Unilaterally imposing tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in goods invites retaliation and has not resulted in meaningful negotiations or concessions.”
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The groups said they agree that China’s policies “have negatively impacted many U.S. companies,” and so they support renegotiations in principle. They argued, however, that the administration’s blunt-force approach of using “high levels of tariffs on Chinese products will continue to miss the mark.” The negative impact will be particularly hard on small- to mid-sized businesses, they warned.
The signatories to the letter include the American Beverage Association, the American Chemistry Council, the National Restaurant Association, the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association, among other groups.
Should the White House adopt the new tariffs, that would put the total amount of Chinese products facing new levies under the Trump administration at $250 billion. That’s on top of broad-based tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum, both of which are primarily directed at China. Beijing has responded by placing tariffs of between 5 and 25 percent on $60 billion worth of U.S goods to date.
The letter follows two week of public hearings at the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office on the proposed tariffs during which many businesses opposed the tariffs while others pressed for exceptions for products that they import.
