Coalition Urges Trump to Delay New Tariffs as Holiday ‘Gift You Can Give’ US Families
Despite President Donald Trump’s remarks earlier this month that he delayed the List 4B Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods to Dec. 15 so that they wouldn’t hurt consumers during the holiday shopping season, “a large portion of holiday merchandise will still be hit by September and October tariff increases at an even higher rate than was initially anticipated,” the Americans for Free Trade Coalition wrote the president Wednesday. The coalition urged Trump to delay putting the 15 percent List 4A tariffs into effect Sunday and avoid hiking the previous three rounds of tariffs by 5 percentage points on Oct. 1 as “the gift you can give American families this holiday season.”
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“With some products facing tariffs as high as 30 percent, many businesses will have no choice but to pass along those costs to consumers,” said the multi-industry coalition of dozens of trade groups, including CTA, the Information Technology Industry Council and the National Retail Federation. Price increases “will likely hit shoppers just as they are making their holiday purchases,” it said.
“Because these tariffs were announced with little warning, it is impossible for U.S. importers to share the burden with supply chain partners in China or shift their production to other countries. The full adverse impact of these tariff increases will be felt entirely in the United States and could represent one of the largest tax increases in American history.”
Ordering companies to leave China, as Trump did by tweet Friday, “is not a solution and is unrealistic,” said the coalition. Though many are trying to “diversify” their supply chains, “developing overseas markets is critical to reaching the 95 percent of consumers who live outside the U.S. and in return expanding opportunities for American workers and consumers,” it said.
Trump administration allegations that China's the main source of “fentanyl-like substances” distributed and consumed in the U.S. are “groundless and false,” said a Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Wednesday. Trump gave China’s alleged failure to stop the flow of fentanyl to the U.S. as one of his justifications for imposing the List 4 tariffs on virtually all Chinese goods not previously dutied (see 1908010059).
He had put List 4 on hold weeks earlier after he and Chinese president Xi Jinping agreed at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, to restart trade talks (see 1907010015). Trump subsequently ordered some 10 percent tariffs into effect Sept. 1, the rest Dec. 15, before raising them to 15 percent last Friday after China imposed retaliatory tariffs on $75 billion in U.S. goods (see 1908230006).