President Biden will announce Tuesday that he will raise tariffs on a range of Chinese imports, including electric vehicles, solar cells, semiconductors and advanced batteries, in what he calls an effort to protect strategic American industries from a new wave of competitors that are unfairly subsidized. by Beijing.
The president will also officially endorse maintaining tariffs on more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods that were implemented by President Donald J. Trump. Biden criticized those tariffs as taxes on American consumers during his 2020 run for the White House.
Biden’s actions are the latest escalation in the trade war by a president who initially promised to repeal at least some of Trump’s tariffs but now refuses to cede ground to his rival in a tough appeal to China to woo undecided voters. in the industrial sector. Midwest and beyond.
They also reflect Biden’s efforts to leverage Trump’s consensus-defying trade confrontation with China while focusing it on sectors of strategic importance to the United States, such as clean energy and semiconductors.
The increased tariffs will apply to about $18 billion worth of annual imports from China, White House officials said. The biggest increase will be a quadrupling of tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 25 percent to 100 percent. That measure aims to protect a sector of the U.S. auto industry that is on track to receive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal subsidies to help the United States transition to a clean energy future.
Biden is banking on his efforts to use government investments in heavy manufacturing, including electric vehicles and other green technologies, to create middle-class jobs and help win swing states that are home to parts of those industries. Biden’s advisers referenced trade policy before the announcement, singling out states they expected to benefit from the tariffs.
“We know that China’s unfair practices have harmed communities in Michigan and Pennsylvania and across the country that now have the opportunity to return because of President Biden’s investment agenda,” Lael Brainard, who heads the Council, told reporters. White House National Economy.
Brainard also criticized the Trump administration for what he called a “failed” effort to force China to change unfair trade practices.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who previously criticized the tariffs as taxes on consumers, said the new levies were justified because China’s excess industrial capacity posed a threat to the United States and its allies and to emerging markets. . She said the Biden administration would not allow cheap Chinese exports to hurt American workers.
“President Biden and I have seen firsthand the impacts of surges of certain artificially cheap Chinese imports on American communities in the past, and we will not tolerate that again,” Yellen said, explaining that the tariffs were not intended to be “anti-Porcelain.”
Administration officials had long debated reducing some of Trump’s tariffs, which applied to a wide range of products, including clothing and home lighting, while raising taxes in areas more strategic. But officials pointed to a long-awaited mandatory review by Biden’s trade representative, also set to be released Tuesday, that concluded that China’s failure to comply with international trade rules required keeping all tariffs in place.
Officials said this week that they believed U.S. companies sourcing products and components abroad had either adhered to those initial tariffs or used an official process to request tariff exclusions.
The relative value of goods subject to Trump’s original tariffs, compared to the much lower value of those targeted by Biden’s tariffs, reflects a crucial difference in their competitive approaches to trade with China.
Trump favored broad tariffs as a means of exerting influence over China, given that its export economy remains highly dependent on the American consumer. While in office, he attempted to use tariffs as a club to negotiate more favorable terms of trade between countries and bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, with little success.
Trump has promised to go even further if he wins in November: restricting investment between the two countries and banning some Chinese products in the United States altogether. He has also promised to apply that approach more broadly, subjecting all imports, regardless of their origin, to an additional 10 percent tariff.
Biden chose to increase Chinese tariffs in areas his administration has targeted for growth and where the United States has invested huge sums of money, including in clean energy technology and semiconductors.
The tax on Chinese solar cells will double to 50 percent. The rate of certain advanced batteries, along with the critical minerals needed to build them, will increase to 25 percent. Semiconductor tariffs will double to 50 percent. Some of those increases will be delayed in an apparent effort to give domestic companies time to ramp up their own production and find other sources outside China.
Other tariffs will hit industries in important swing states, including heavy metals. Rates for certain imported steel and aluminum products will triple to 25 percent.
Biden will also raise tariffs on some medical equipment that officials consider essential to the pandemic response, including masks and surgical gloves.
Administration officials view those increases as an appropriate response to the Chinese government’s “unfair and non-market practices,” including state subsidies to factories and what officials call the theft of innovative ideas from foreign competitors.
“China’s forced technology transfers and intellectual property theft have contributed to its control of 70, 80 and even 90 percent of global production of critical inputs needed for our technologies, infrastructure, energy and healthcare, creating risks.” unacceptable to supply chains and the US economy. security,” administration officials said in a fact sheet distributed ahead of the announcement.
A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, responding to a question about the reports on the tariffs, said at the ministry’s daily news briefing on Tuesday that China “will take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”
Many economists oppose tariffs because they tend to act as an effective tax on domestic consumers by raising prices. Administration officials said this week that they did not expect the rate hike to increase price growth (which is already uncomfortably fast for many consumers) because of how limited their targets are.
Union leaders and Democratic lawmakers were expected to applaud the announcement, although some Democrats, such as Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, have already urged Biden to go further and ban Chinese electric vehicles.
The adoption of tariffs, first by Trump and now by Biden, reflects a growing awareness, inside and outside Washington, of Chinese trade practices that have cost American workers their jobs, said Adam Hodge, managing director of the communications firm. Bully Pulpit International in Washington and former spokesperson for Biden’s trade representative and National Security Council.
“We’ve noticed,” Hodge said. “It’s a smart policy because it responds to what Americans see in communities across the country.”
Alan Rappeport contributed with reports. Siyi Zhao He contributed research from Seoul.