Janet Yellen says Joe Biden’s team looking to ‘reconfigure’ China tariffs
- The US Treasury secretary says the administration wants to make the Trump-era measures more ‘strategic’
- She added that cuts on duties could help bring down prices, but she does not think tariff policy is a ‘panacea with respect to inflation’
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the Biden administration is looking to “reconfigure” tariffs imposed on Chinese goods under former president Donald Trump to make them more “strategic”.
“This administration inherited a set of 301 tariffs imposed by the Trump administration that I think really weren’t designed to serve our strategic interests,” Yellen told lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
While China is guilty of unfair trade practices and the US should be acting to protect its national-security interests, some of the existing tariffs have hurt American consumers and businesses, she said.
President Joe Biden’s team is weighing what to do with Trump’s tariffs on about US$300 billion of goods imported from the US economy’s biggest rival.
Some businesses have benefited from the tariffs protecting them from Chinese import competition, but .companies that use the goods as inputs in areas including manufacturing have been hurt.