Face masks among Chinese exports given four-month US trade war tariff reprieve

Dozens of US imports from China granted short extension to previous tariff exemptions, until the end of 2020, after the American election

Renewal of previous one-year product exclusion covers diverse range of goods, including respirators, binoculars and musical instruments

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As the coronavirus continues to spread in the United States, China-made face masks are among exports to the US that have been granted a new short-term extension to trade war tariffs until the end of the year. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 1:09pm, 2 Sep 2020Updated: 9:38pm, 2 Sep 2020

Disposable face masks, respirators, Bluetooth tracking devices and musical instruments are among the Chinese exports granted a new short-term exemption to trade war tariffs by the United States, its trade department announced on Tuesday.

The products on List 1 of the Section 301 tariff action against China had been exempted on September 1, 2019, for one year. But the reprieve has been extended just four months, until the end of 2020. The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) did not explain why the extension period was shortened, in a note published on the Federal Register, the official journal of the federal government that contains government agency rules, proposed rules and public notices.

The four-month extension will cover the US election, allow China to continue making progress towards meeting the terms of the phase one trade deal, and could theoretically help avert further flare-ups in the trade war.

Other items on the exclusion list include LCD display units, binoculars, postage stamps and earth-drilling machinery. This is one of eight lists of exempted products issued under the USTR’s product-exclusion process, launched last year.

Illustrating how disparate and miscellaneous the dozens of listed items are, the exemptions also include “tufts of swine hair bristles, oriented with the soft feather tipped ends of the hairs facing up and the hard, root ends of the hairs facing down, with the root ends of the hairs glued together to form a round bottom not more than 7mm in diameter” and “brushes of natural goat hair bristles, which are in lengths of at least 30mm but not more than 33mm”.

Trade, initially the primary area on which US President Donald Trump attacked China, has been viewed in recent weeks as one of the few areas of constructive dialogue between the world’s two largest economies, with the superpower relationship descending into what is widely billed as a “new cold war”.

Tensions have risen as the US pushed through bans on Chinese apps, including the short-video platform TikTok. The US also called for an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, and China flexed its muscles in Hong Kong with the roll-out of national security legislation.