Tag: Customs (Tariff)

United States Spurns China for Mexico and Other Allies, Trade Data Shows

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In the depths of the pandemic, as global supply chains buckled and the cost of shipping a container to China soared nearly twentyfold, Marco Villarreal spied an opportunity. In 2021, Mr. Villarreal resigned as Caterpillar’s director general in Mexico and began nurturing ties with companies looking to shift manufacturing from China to Mexico. He found a client in Hisun, a Chinese producer of all-terrain vehicles, which hired Mr. Villarreal to establish a $152 million manufacturing site in Saltillo, an industrial hub in northern Mexico. Mr. Villarreal said foreign companies, particularly…

Trump’s Tariffs Hurt U.S. Jobs but Swayed American Voters, Study Says

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The sweeping tariffs that former President Donald J. Trump imposed on China and other American trading partners were simultaneously a political success and an economic failure, a new study suggests. That’s because the levies won over voters for the Republican Party even though they did not bring back jobs. The nonpartisan working paper examines monthly data on U.S. employment by industry to find that the tariffs that Mr. Trump placed on foreign metals, washing machines and an array of goods from China starting in 2018 neither raised nor lowered the…

Flush With Investment, New U.S. Factories Face a Familiar Challenge

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The Biden administration has begun pumping more than $2 trillion into U.S. factories and infrastructure, investing huge sums to try to strengthen American industry and fight climate change. But the effort is facing a familiar threat: a surge of low-priced products from China. That is drawing the attention of President Biden and his aides, who are considering new protectionist measures to make sure American industry can compete against Beijing. As U.S. factories spin up to produce electric vehicles, semiconductors and solar panels, China is flooding the market with similar goods,…

Trump’s 2025 Trade Agenda: A New Tax on Imports and a Split from China

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Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an aggressive expansion of his first-term efforts to upend America’s trade policies if he returns to power in 2025 — including imposing a new tax on “most imported goods” that would risk alienating allies and igniting a global trade war. While the Biden administration has kept tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on China, Mr. Trump would go far beyond that and try to wrench apart the world’s two largest economies, which exchanged some $758 billion in goods and services last year. Mr. Trump…

Lawmakers Call for Raising Tariffs and Severing Economic Ties With China

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Bipartisan lawmakers on Tuesday called for severing more of America’s economic and financial ties with China, including revoking the low tariff rates that the United States granted Beijing after it joined the World Trade Organization more than two decades ago. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a wide-ranging set of recommendations for resetting America’s economic relationship with China. The report, which was signed by both House Democrats and Republicans, argued that China had carried out a “multidecade campaign of economic aggression” that had undercut American firms,…

U.S. Retailers Say an Old Trade Law Puts Them at a Disadvantage

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American retailers have faced an existential crisis since e-commerce disrupted the industry’s traditional business models. But their latest threat, a group of retailers and policymakers say, is coming from a nearly century-old trade rule that has given their e-commerce rivals — many of them founded in China — an unfair advantage. The rule, known as de minimis, allows companies to ship packages worth less than $800 into the United States without paying duties and fees that Customs and Border Protection enforces. Nearly three million de minimis shipments enter the United…

Anthony Albanese to Visit Xi Jinping as China-Australia Tensions Ease

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Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announced on Sunday that he would visit China early next month, meeting with its top leader, Xi Jinping. Such a visit would be the first by an Australian leader since 2016 and another sign of easing tensions between the two nations, along with the recent release of a detained Australian journalist and a breakthrough on talks aimed at removing staggering tariffs on Australian wine that China imposed three years ago. China is Australia’s biggest overseas market, with exports and services to China forming nearly one-third…

Yellen’s China Visit Aims to Ease Tensions Amid Deep Divisions

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The last time a U.S. Treasury secretary visited China, Washington and Beijing were locked in a trade war, the Trump administration was preparing to label China a currency manipulator, and fraying relations between the two countries were roiling global markets. Four years later, as Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen prepares to arrive in Beijing, many of the economic policy concerns that have been festering between the United States and China remain — or have even intensified — despite the Biden administration’s less antagonistic tone. The tariffs that President Donald J.…

TikTok, Shein and Other Companies Distance Themselves From China

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As it expanded internationally, Shein, the rapidly growing fast fashion app, progressively cut ties to its home country, China. It moved its headquarters to Singapore and de-registered its original company in Nanjing. It set up operations in Ireland and Indiana, and hired Washington lobbyists to highlight its U.S. expansion plans as it prepares for a potential initial public offering this year. Yet the clothing retailer can’t shake the focus on its ties with China. Along with other brands like the viral social app TikTok and shopping app Temu, Shein has…

Congress Clashes With Biden Over Tariffs on Illegal Chinese Solar Panels

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The Senate voted on Wednesday to reinstate tariffs on solar panels from Chinese companies in Southeast Asia that had been found to be coming into the United States in violation of trade rules. The measure, which passed by a vote of 56 to 41, had already been approved by the House. It sets up a showdown with the Biden administration, which had temporarily halted the tariffs to try to ensure that the country had an adequate supply of solar panels in the fight against climate change. President Biden has said…