March 29, 2022
Are your products listed?
On March 23, local time, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced on its official website that it would restore tariff exemptions for some Chinese imports, involving 352 of the 549 pending products. The regulation will apply to goods imported from China between October 12, 2021 and December 31, 2022.
The original address of the announcement:
https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2022/march/ustr-issues-determination-reinstatement-certain-exclusions-china-section-301-tariffs
The question that everyone is most concerned about is which products are exempted. According to the announcement, the exempted categories include certain types of bicycle parts, motors, machinery, chemicals, seafood and luggage bags.
The specific list we have got:
It is reported that this part of the list of exempted goods dates back to the time when Trump was in office, imposing tariffs of 7.5% to 25% on Chinese products worth US$370 billion. Among these tariff-added goods, the United States initially provided more than 2,200 products. Tariff exemptions to provide relief to certain industries and retailers. Most waivers ended when they expired, but 549 were extended for a year, and these also expired at the end of 2020.
On October 8 last year, USTR announced that it intends to re-exempt tariffs on 549 items imported from China and is seeking public comments on this. After nearly half a year, USTR confirmed the list.
"Today's decision was made after careful consideration of public comments and consultation with other U.S. agencies," USTR said.
Since taking office, U.S. President Joe Biden has been under pressure from the U.S. business community and some lawmakers from both parties to ease the burden of tariffs on imported goods.
At the end of January 2022, more than 140 members of the Democratic and Republican parties in the U.S. House of Representatives sent a joint letter to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, calling for the expansion of tariff exemptions for Chinese goods exported to the U.S. to help U.S. companies recover from the damage caused by the new crown pneumonia epidemic. Recovery from risks such as supply chain disruptions.
The U.S. House of Representatives said in a joint letter that the tariffs imposed on Chinese goods exported to the U.S. under Section 301 have had a broad impact on U.S. manufacturing, agriculture, fishery, retail, energy, technology and service companies Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with weaker tariff cost capacity have been hit particularly hard. At the same time, "Section 301" has raised the prices of a series of consumer goods exported from China to the United States, harming the interests of American families and consumers.
As early as last August, more than 30 of the most influential business groups in the United States (such as the American Chamber of Commerce, the American Business Roundtable, the National Retail Federation, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the American Semiconductor Industry Association, etc.) The letter called on the Biden administration to restart trade talks with China and cut tariffs on Chinese imports.
But there are naysayers. The National Council of Textile Organizations, which represents the U.S. textile industry, wants the government to keep tariffs on apparel and home textiles from China.
According to a survey by Moody's Analytics, more than 90% of the tariffs imposed by the United States on China are borne by American companies and households. More importantly, restricting imports from China has more negative effects, costing the United States a large number of jobs and causing inflation to soar.
The latest data shows that the US consumer price index (CPI) in January 2022 rose by 7.5% year-on-year, hitting a 40-year high since February 1982. Even after excluding volatile food and energy prices, the U.S. core CPI rose 6 percent in January from a year earlier, the largest year-on-year gain since August 1982.
