US-China trade war: Competing interests tug at Joe Biden as he mulls cutting tariffs on Chinese goods
- Even the president’s advisers are split: some favour keeping duties as leverage in talks with Beijing; others want to reduce them at a time of high inflation
- Biden looks prepared to roll back at least some fraction of the tariffs imposed during the trade war Donald Trump started four years ago
Any rollback of US tariffs imposed during the trade war with China are likely to be modest and the relief process protracted, said foreign trade experts and former US officials, adding that Washington’s growing focus on national security in trade flows could end up worsening relations.
This comes as US President Joe Biden has held off making a decision on a series of mandatory expiration deadlines to end the tariffs that began this week.
“I think the Biden administration will come out with something, but it’s politics. They can’t look like they’re soft on China,” said Nicole Bivens Collinson, head of international trade and government relations at the Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg law firm and a former negotiator for the Office of the US Trade Representative.
“This could ultimately be a 10- to 20-year problem because once you put tariffs in place, no administration is going to campaign on ‘I’m going to reduce tariffs on China.’”
With tariffs integrally linked to geopolitics, American politics and economics, analysts expressed a long shot hope that talks in coming days between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economies meeting in Bali might ease the situation.
That could happen, they say, if the two countries include tariff relief as part of some broader agreement that might see Beijing give ground on other geopolitical issues, such as military tensions around Taiwan or the fallout from Russia’s war against Ukraine.