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President Joe Biden is holding back on a decision to scrap any Trump-era tariffs on China imports, while the administration studies ways to help businesses seeking relief, reported Bloomberg News, citing people familiar with the matter.
Biden earlier in the summer had signed off on a new exclusion process for exemptions from tariffs on manufacturing materials imported from China, but has delayed making a final decision for now, the report said.
Notably, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said at a forum on Wednesday that punitive tariffs on Chinese imports will not be lowered until China adopts more market-oriented trade and economic principles.
Speaking in a discussion organised by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Tai elaborated on US President Joe Biden’s economic strategy with respect to China, characterising it as the result of “an awakening” to the different histories and governance principles that have prevented Beijing from adopting what Washington expects from World Trade Organization members.
“What we really want from China in terms of economics and trade is for the Chinese economy to operate like ours, and along the assumptions and the norms that we feel are embodied in organisations like the World Trade Organization … which is open market-based with a pretty clean separation between government and state and the market and the economy,” Tai said.