Install ‘Comprehensive’ Tariff Exclusions, 41 Senators Urge USTR

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative should establish a “comprehensive” exclusion process to bring relief to importers with exposure to the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, senators wrote in a bipartisan letter to USTR Katherine Tai Monday. Enabling businesses affected by the tariffs “to apply for limited, yet renewable, relief is a valuable component of our strategy to counter China’s unfair trade practices,” the 41 lawmakers said. “We believe that restarting a full exclusion process can allow the United States to continue to maintain pressure on China, while providing relief to the economic pain facing businesses and workers across the country.” For any exclusions granted under the new process, “we believe relief must be meaningfully retroactive” to the date the tariffs took effect, they said. “The exclusion process should prioritize transparency, speed, consistency, and fairness.” To ease USTR’s administrative burden of doing so, “we suggest presumptively excluding any product for which imports from China represent nearly all imports to the United States,” said the senators. “Even years after the Section 301 tariffs were imposed, the exceptional reliance on China for those specific imports suggests that moving these supply chains out of China is uniquely unlikely, and that our efforts to diversify production locales and rescore manufacturing would be better spent on other products.” USTR didn’t respond to requests for comment. Customs and Border Protection collected nearly $125 billion in four rounds of Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports through Feb. 2 since the first of the tariffs took effect in July 2018.