Top US senator and Donald Trump ally takes swipe at China but urges caution on tariffs
Tariffs are ‘taxes paid by Americans … and new tariffs would jeopardise the new opportunities we created through tax reform’, Orrin Hatch says
US Senator Orrin Hatch, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, took a thinly veiled swipe at China this week just as a high-ranking envoy from Beijing was landing in Washington for talks aimed at reducing trade tension.
The US must “combat trade practices by foreign nations that harm American businesses and undermine the world trade system, but the tactics we choose should be targeted directly at specific countries and specific practices”, Hatch said at the US Chamber of Commerce’s Invest in America! Summit, an event sponsored by the China General Chamber of Commerce.
Hatch’s comments came just before Trump confirmed he would sign off on hefty tariffs for steel and aluminium products from other countries – including China – next week.
The US president said he would place a 25 per cent tariff on steel and 10 per cent tariff on aluminium product imports, which he said were harming US producers.
“You’re going to have protection for the first time in a long time,” Trump told a gathering of metals industry executives at the White House.
But Hatch said he wanted Trump to think twice before levying new punitive import tariffs.