WASHINGTON — President Biden unveiled new tariffs Tuesday on Chinese goods — escalating former President Donald Trump’s trade war with Beijing while trying to cut into the Republican’s polling lead on economic issues.
The tariffs will apply to roughly $18 billion per year in imports, including metals such as steel and aluminum; green energy technologies, including solar panels and electric vehicles; and certain semiconductors, construction cranes and medical products.
Over the next two years, electric vehicles will face a 100% tariff, solar panel parts will be slapped with a 50% import levy and other goods will receive a 25% penalty.
“China’s using the same playbook it has before to power its own growth at the expense of others,” chief White House economist Lael Brainard said in remarks outlining the tariffs, which will be formalized in a Rose Garden speech by the 81-year-old Biden later Tuesday.
Trump, 77, has vowed to push tariffs even higher on Chinese products, floating a 200% levy on electric vehicles to maintain a domestic edge.
The 45th president, who is set for a rematch against Biden in November, aggressively imposed tariffs on Chinese goods beginning in 2018 in an attempt to force a new trade agreement that would have reduced Beijing’s protectionist practices at the expense of US companies.
Although pro-free-trade critics argued the tariffs would increase the costs of Chinese-made products to US consumers, Trump’s policies have since been supported by both parties.
Biden, who kept in place Trump’s China tariffs, announced last month during a trip to swing-state Pennsylvania that he supported an additional 15% tariff on Chinese steel and aluminum pursuant to a review by the US Trade Representative’s office.
Trump had imposed a 25% tariff on steel and 10% tariff on aluminum from most countries, including China. He later imposed tariffs of between 7.5% and 25% on Chinese goods comprising $362 billion of annual imports.
Washington and Beijing agreed to a “Phase One” bundle of reforms in January 2020, but further talks were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the US in March of that year.
Biden’s tariff announcement comes as voters consistently rank the economy as one of their top issues amid persistently high inflation and interest rates.
A Gallup poll released this month found that just 38% of US adults have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of confidence in Biden to manage the economy, versus 46% who said so of Trump. An ABC News/Ipsos poll this month similarly found that 32% trust Biden on the economy and 46% trust Trump.
Republicans, including Trump, argue that Biden has been too deferential to China’s government on an array of issues — including in seeking answers on the origin of COVID-19, which killed more than 1 million Americans after what the FBI believes was a lab leak in Wuhan, China; and on halting exports of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which have killed more than 250,000 Americans since Biden took office.
Congressional Republicans leading an impeachment inquiry into alleged Biden family corruption have produced evidence that the now-president met with the leaders of two separate Chinese government-controlled business ventures that involved first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden.