Trump advisers hit Republicans trying to ease China tariffs

America’s trade deficit with China is soaring, but 60 RINO Republicans want to ease the Trump-era China tariffs. This is insane. Any Republican who supports easing or ending the Trump-era China tariffs must be primaried.

Trump advisers hit Republicans trying to ease China tariffs

By Washington Examiner, January 26, 202

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Top trade advisers to former President Donald Trump slammed an effort by Republican and Democratic lawmakers to immediately expand tariff exclusions on billions of dollars of Chinese goods, exposing a fault line inside Congress over trade policies involving China.

In a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including 60 Republicans, urged President Joe Biden’s top trade official to expand tariff exclusions on Chinese goods, arguing that the administration’s current proposal to relaunch exclusions is too narrow. The tariffs are undermining the competitiveness of American manufacturing compared to foreign competitors and hurting U.S. consumers, the letter says.

Reopening the exclusion process would allow companies to apply for exemptions from tariff duties for goods subject to Section 301 of the U.S. trade law, a priority for business groups that have lobbied the White House and Congress on the issue for months.

But former top advisers to Trump argue that dismantling the tariffs would be an economic boon to China and are urging the former president to review his political endorsements of lawmakers who signed the letter.

“The trade deficit with Communist China is soaring off the charts, stealing more American jobs,” said Peter Navarro, White House director of trade and manufacturing policy during the Trump administration. “That’s a case for raising tariffs, not lowering them.”

Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser in the White House, warned that Republicans proposing to weaken the tariffs, a pillar of the former president’s U.S.-China trade war, could face bloodshed in the midterm elections.

“Trump’s deplorable base is coming for any Republican that cozies up to the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

Just two years ago, McCarthy said the tariffs had proven effective in bringing China to the negotiating table for a “Phase 1” trade deal, despite his initial reservations.

The issue is likely to remain at the forefront of electoral politics regardless of whether Trump makes another bid for the presidency.

In late 2020, shortly before Biden took office, then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer advised the incoming president to stick to the deal and use tariffs as leverage. Lighthizer now chairs the Center for American Trade at the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute.

A source told the Washington Examiner that Lighthizer was so fired up by the push to weaken the tariffs that he considered going on Fox Business News to denounce it. Lighthizer declined a request for comment. 

Tai is currently reviewing a slate of more than 500 possible exclusions, including some expired, and has called for defending U.S. economic interests “to the hilt” from damage caused by years of unfair competition.

A former top trade official during the Trump administration denounced the push for exclusions as a gift to China amid Washington’s efforts to extract concessions from Beijing.

“This is clearly a reward for the Chinese. These companies had four years to bring [supply chains] back, and they elected to keep it in China,” this person said. “There’s no rationale at all for why these companies should get any more exclusions — just none.”

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