President Trump’s enthusiasm for tariffs notwithstanding, 661 American companies and trade groups urged him on Thursday to avoid imposing any more on China and rescind those already in place.
“An escalated trade war is not in the country’s best interests,” the companies wrote in a letter to Trump and advisers including U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
“We are counting on you to force a positive resolution that removes the current tariffs, fosters American competitiveness, grows our economy and protects our workers,” they said.
Setting 25% tariffs on another $325 billion in Chinese imports on top of the duties on $200 billion in goods imposed since 2018, as Trump has threatened to do, would cost 2 million U.S. jobs, pare 1% from the U.S. economy and saddle the average American family of four with a $2,000 cost increase, said the authors. They include representatives of small businesses in locales from Boulder, Colo., to San Antonio, Cincinnati, and New York.
Their concerns mirror those of larger businesses, economists, and even some lawmakers, who have long warned that Trump’s sprawling trade war risks undermining U.S. economic growth that had been buoyed by GOP-led tax cuts approved in late 2017.
The president, who has also imposed tariffs on steel, aluminum, washing machines, and solar panels while threatening them on $347 billion in Mexican goods as well as automobiles, has so far brushed aside such concerns.
Tariffs are a “beautiful” and invaluable tool in negotiations with both trading partners and competitors such as China, he has said.
Mexico’s agreement late last week to help curb illegal immigration through the southern U.S. border, forestalling the threat of levies on its goods, shows how effective such duties are, Trump said.
He believes they will be equally useful with China, the world’s second-largest economy. The administration spent five months negotiating with Beijing on a trade agreement that would give U.S. companies more access to Chinese markets and halt the forced transfer of technology to state-owned firms before pulling out in May.
U.S. officials said at the time that President Xi Jinping’s negotiators had attempted to walk back key provisions of the deal. In response, Trump more than doubled duties on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25%, and said more tariffs might follow, alarming Wall Street.
“We’ll end up making a deal with China,” Trump promised reporters on Wednesday. “We have a very good relationship, although it’s a little bit testy right now.”
In the meantime, he said, American companies can avoid the duties altogether by moving their overseas plants home.
“People don’t realize that,” Trump said. There is no tariff “if you do exactly as I say: You bring your company back to the U.S.”
