In his speech, the US president justified the hefty tariffs imposed against China by protecting American work and know-how.
21:12•Updated 21:13
President of the United States Joe Biden announced today that the U.S. is increasing rounds of trade sanctions against China.
Heavy customs duties are imposed on products imported from China: for example, customs duties on Chinese electric cars will rise from 25 percent to 100 percent this year.
Biden’s toolkit aims to ensure that America’s green transition is implemented with American work and American products.
Tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum products will be tripled. Next year, tariffs on Chinese microcircuits and solar cells will be doubled.
Biden praised his actions at the White House press conference, where the president appeared together with representatives of American employers’ and workers’ unions.
– We are not going to let China collapse our market and prevent fair competition from American car manufacturers, Biden said.
Biden said that Americans will build their own electric cars, and boasted that the United States will soon build 500,000 new charging points for electric cars in the country.
As such, China’s electric car imports to the United States have still been modest: An expert interviewed by The Financial Times according to the report, only 2 percent of US imported electric cars come from China.
Biden’s actions suggest that the Chinese are not even given a cautious foothold in the domestic market.
– For years, the Chinese administration has poured money into Chinese companies in the steel and aluminum, semiconductor, electric car and solar cell sectors. To the industrial sectors of the future, Biden stated.
According to Biden, industries supported in this way make abnormally cheap products that “drive other manufacturers into bankruptcy”.
According to the White House, the U.S. customs measures aim to make China stop “engaging in unfair trade practices.”
China vows to retaliate
In China, the news was not received with joy. According to China’s Ministry of Commerce, the tariffs will “seriously affect the atmosphere of bilateral relations”. In China’s opinion, the United States is politicizing purely economic issues.
China has said it will take countermeasures to protect its interests.
EU countries also have to think about whether the American example is worth following. EU leaders, such as the President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyenhave raised the unfair scale of Chinese imports on several occasions recently.
China’s pain in the US market is unlikely to ease any time soon. Biden’s likely counter-candidate in the fall presidential election Donald Trump called for even tougher tariffs on China when he arrived at the New York courthouse on Tuesday.