WASHINGTON — The list of Chinese products targeted by the Trump administration's potential next round of import duties includes nearly all tires along with polymers and other raw materials important to the rubber industry.
According to the notice, posted on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's Web site, the administration is modifying its original June 20 proposal — to place 25-percent tariffs on up to $50 billion worth of Chinese goods — to add 10-percent duties on up to $200 billion of additional goods.
The USTR is taking this action in response to China's placing 26-percent duties on $50 billion worth of U.S. goods in retaliation to the U.S.'s action, according to the notice. China chose to retaliate against the U.S. instead of addressing U.S. concerns with China's unfair trade practices, according to the USTR.
"It did this without any international legal basis or justification," U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a statement.
The 205-page notice is taken up almost completely with the list of goods facing a 10-percent tariffs, including but not limited to:
- New pneumatic tires, bias, radial and/or solid, for virtually every kind of vehicle, ranging from motorcycles to heavy-duty construction, mining and/or industrial vehicles, as well as used tires, retreaded tires, tire treads and inner tubes;
- Natural rubber latex, natural rubber smoked sheets, technically specified rubber, other forms of natural rubber, guayule, styrene-butadiene rubber, chloroprene rubber, acrylonitrile-butadiene rubber, isoprene rubber, reclaimed rubber and many other types of rubber;
- Tubes, pipes, hoses, conveyor belts and V-belts made of rubber;
- Rubber medical and seamless gloves, rubber clothing, floor coverings and mats, gaskets, washers, seals, boat and dock fenders, and miscellaneous articles of hard or noncellular vulcanized synthetic rubber; and
- Rubber accelerators, antidegradants and other chemicals.
The USTR is proposing these duties under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to take retaliatory action against governments that violate specific provisions of trade agreements.
