The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it will be placing tariffs on $18 billion of imports from China in an attempt to protect American workers and businesses, but the move was not celebrated by all Americans.
Tariffs will be raised on steel and aluminum from 0-7.5% to 25%, semiconductors from 25% to 50% by 2025, electric vehicles from 25% to 100%, batteries and critical minerals from 7.5% to 25%, solar panels from 25% to 50%, and medical products from 7.5% to 25% in 2026.
However, not everyone in the Democratic Party is rallying behind Biden’s new tariffs.
“This is horrible news for American consumers and a major setback for clean energy,” Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) posted on X. “Tariffs are a direct, regressive tax on Americans and this tax increase will hit every family.”
But Biden explained his administration’s decision by saying China was “driving other manufacturers around the world out of business.”
“China heavily subsidized all these products, pushing Chinese companies to produce far more than the rest of the world can absorb. And then dumping the excess products onto the market at unfairly low prices….” Biden said Tuesday in a speech at the White House.
In addition, Biden endorsed maintaining tariffs on more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods that were put in place by former President Donald Trump. In 2019, Biden actually criticized Trump’s tariffs on China as being taxes pushed onto American consumers.
“Trump doesn’t get the basics,” Biden posted on X at the time. “Any freshman econ student can tell you that the American people are paying his tariffs. The cashiers at Target see what’s going on — they know more about economics than Trump.”
With these strengthened tariffs, the Biden administration could be hoping to win favor with voters in swing states that rely heavily on manufacturing jobs.
“We know China’s unfair practices have harmed communities in Michigan and Pennsylvania and around the country that are now having the opportunity to come back due to President Biden’s investment agenda,” Lael Brainard, the director of the National Economic Council, said.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a former critic of the Chinese tariffs, said they were necessary because China produced an excess of products that flooded American markets.
“President Biden and I have seen firsthand the impacts of surges of certain artificially cheap Chinese imports on American communities in the past, and we will not tolerate that again,” Yellen said, explaining that the tariffs were not meant to be “anti-China.”
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Biden’s tariffs also garnered criticism from Republican leaders since the administration only put tariffs on electric vehicles and not gas-powered ones.
“The fact that these tariffs do not apply to gas-powered cars and trucks but only to Chinese EVs shows that this has nothing to do with protecting American Workers,” Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “It’s all about Crooked Joe’s agenda of killing gas-powered automobiles while forcing Americans into ultra-expensive Electric Vehicles they don’t want and can’t afford.”
