WASHINGTON—The Biden administration said Wednesday that it will renew tariff waivers for 352 categories of goods from China after previously granted exemptions expired.
The items that will be exempted include certain kinds of bicycle parts, electric motors, machinery, chemicals, seafood and duffel bags.
The goods in question had all been previously exempted from the tariffs that were imposed by the Trump administration as part of its trade war with China in 2018 and 2019, but those exemptions had expired.
The Biden administration conducted a review of 549 categories of goods for which waivers were sought, and on Wednesday the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said it had granted 352 exclusions while denying the rest.
Wednesday’s decision will have a relatively small impact on the tariffs overall. The tariffs imposed in 2018 and 2019 covered more than $350 billion a year worth of trade, and companies had filed more than 53,000 requests for tariff relief.
The Trump administration granted fewer than 7,000 exemptions. With the exception of medical equipment to fight the pandemic, most of those exemptions expired by 2020.
In conducting its review, the USTR said it would consider whether goods were available within the U.S. or third countries, if changes in global supply chains had affected the availability of products, and the efforts companies had taken to find alternate sources.
“USTR considered whether or not reinstating the exclusion would impact or result in severe economic harm to the commenter or other U.S. interests, including the impact on small businesses, employment, manufacturing output, and critical supply chains,” the USTR said in the formal notice of its action.
Since announcing the review in October, the USTR received more than 2,000 requests from businesses, most seeking to have tariffs peeled back, but some pushing to keep them in place as protection against lower-cost Chinese imports.
Tariffs are paid by U.S. importers, and many of these importers pressed the Trump and Biden administrations to expand the range of goods eligible for exclusions, contending that in many cases the tariffs were primarily hurting U.S. companies.
In an October speech, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that her office might consider a broader exclusion process, but no such process has been announced.
The USTR declined to renew exclusions on 197 categories of products. Among those: four-wheel off-road vehicles from China. Nearly 150 dealers who sell ATVs made by China’s Zhejiang CF Moto Power Co. Ltd. had supported the exclusion. Polaris Inc. of Minnesota opposed granting it.
—Anthony DeBarros contributed to this article.
Write to Josh Zumbrun at [email protected]
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Appeared in the March 24, 2022, print edition as ‘Tariff Waivers Renewed for Some Chinese Imports.’
