US reinstates tariff exemptions on some Chinese products
- The move applies to 352 products on which Washington first imposed levies in 2018, when then president Donald Trump started a trade war with Beijing
- The Biden administration began seeking opinions last October on which of the 549 eligible goods should be excluded
US President Joe Biden’s administration will reinstate tariff exemptions on more than 350 Chinese imports, his trade office said on Wednesday, accounting for about two-thirds of waivers that had expired at the end of 2020.
During that phase, companies were asked to comment on whether affected goods could be sourced from countries other than China, whether product procurement had been affected by global supply chain shifts and if there was domestic capacity for manufacture of the products.
“The focus of the evaluation will be whether, despite the first imposition of these additional duties in September 2018, the particular product remains available only from China,” the USTR said at the time.
In a statement announcing the waivers, the USTR said on Wednesday that the determination had been made “after careful consideration of the public comments, and in consultation with other US agencies.”
The USTR also sought input from the White House’s Covid-19 response team, according to a filing in the Federal Register, suggesting efforts by the administration to minimise the trade dispute’s impact on pandemic response-related supply chains.
Applying to 352 of the 549 product types up for consideration, the exclusions announced on Wednesday include consumer goods like household appliances and bicycles, manufacturing components like electric motors, and some medical equipment such as X-ray hardware.
