Biden Keeps Trump’s Tariffs On Chinese Goods, Adds New Ones On Clean Energy Components

Americans who buy a Chinese-made electric car will pay twice as much as they would have without the new tariff and 25% more for Chinese solar panels.

WASHINGTON — Five years after ridiculing predecessor Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, President Joe Biden on Tuesday added new ones on $18 billion of imports to protect American clean energy manufacturers.

American importers of Chinese solar panels, batteries, semiconductors and permanent magnets will have to pay a 25% tax when they bring them into the country — costs that are eventually passed along to consumers. Chinese electric vehicles will face a 100% tax.

“The fact is American workers can outwork and outcompete anyone, as long as the competition is fair. But for too long, it hasn’t been fair,” Biden said during a Rose Garden announcement that featured officials from both manufacturers and unions. “For years, the Chinese government has poured state money into Chinese companies across the whole range of industry ― steel, aluminum, semiconductors, electric vehicles, solar panels, the industries of the future.”

Running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, Biden attacked Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products as counterproductive and shortsighted. “President Trump may think he’s being tough on China. All that he’s delivered as a consequence of that is American farmers, manufacturers and consumers losing and paying more,” he said then. “His economic decision-making is so shortsighted and as shortsighted as the rest of his foreign policy.”

On Tuesday, Biden said China was violating international trade rules by subsidizing their domestic manufacturers of steel, aluminum, computer chips, solar panels, lithium batteries and medical supplies and then dumping those goods into the world market to depress prices and drive foreign manufacturers out of business.