WASHINGTON: The Biden administration has lifted Trump-era tariffs on 352 Chinese products as part of its new approach to trade with China, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) said in a statement, Sputnik reported.
The statement referred to the USTR’s previously announced intent to remove the 352 products from a list of 549 products that had been reviewed for exemption from the China Section 301 Investigation for tariffs.
“(The) determination was made after careful consideration of the public comments, and in consultation with other US agencies,” the statement said on Wednesday.
In a prior release, the USTR described the tariff exclusion process as pursuant to its new approach toward the US-China trade relationship.
The Trump administration imposed tariffs on hundreds of goods from China, which reciprocated with its own measures against US products, during a long-running diplomatic and trade war overseen by President Donald Trump during the better part of his four years in office.
President Joe Biden has had his own rocky relationship with Beijing despite attempts to put trade and diplomatic ties on a better path.
While Biden has undone most of Trump’s executive orders on immigration, climate and other matters, he left intact some of his predecessor’s original tariffs against China, indicating he might use them to pressure Beijing into making concessions on trade and other issues.
In February, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai reported that getting Beijing to fulfill its commitment to buy more American products under a 2020 US-China trade deal inked by the Trump administration has proven “extremely difficult”.
From January 2020 through November 2021, China’s total imports of US products covered under the so-called Phase One Trade agreement between the two countries stood at $221.9 billion, versus a target of $356.4 billion, data showed. – Bernama
