The Trump administration will delay some tariffs against China on cellphones, laptop computers, toys and some other items until Dec. 15, softening the blow of levies that were scheduled to take effect on Sept. 1 against roughly $300 billion of imports.
The office of the U.S. Trade Representative said that some products will be removed from the tariff lists entirely, based on health, safety, national security and other factors. The statement didn’t say which items would be removed.
The USTR said it would release precise details of the delayed tariffs later Tuesday, but the items that will be delayed are some of the biggest ticket items facing tariffs. Just cellphones and laptops represent about $80 billion of trade, more than a quarter of the tariffs that were posed to take effect, with a 10% levy, in just a few weeks.
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The USTR didn’t provide a reason beyond saying the decision was “part of USTR’s public comment and hearing process.” In June, over the course of seven days of hearings, hundreds of U.S. companies testified that the tariffs would damage their business.
The delay in tariffs also buys a reprieve for negotiators. Talks between the U.S. and Chinese negotiating teams, in Shanghai last month, ended without a breakthrough, and a Chinese delegation was planning to visit Washington in September, shortly after the tariffs were scheduled to take affect. Now, the U.S. and China will have another opportunity to strike a deal and avert the tariffs.
The stock market soared on the news of yet another potential thaw in the tensions between the world’s two largest economies. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 400 points, or nearly 1.7%, in morning trade Tuesday.
Apple Inc. surged more than 4.5% on news that smartphones, including its iPhone would be spared until at least December from the proposed tariffs.
The reprieve is the second break the Trump administration has granted Apple. The company last year dodged duties on its smartwatches and wireless earbuds after the U.S. excluded those gadgets from planned tariffs.
The move is the latest seesawing in the talks between Washington and Beijing. The tariffs in question—on roughly $300 billion in goods—were first announced in May following a breakdown in U.S.-China talks. They would have come atop the roughly $250 billion in goods from China already facing tariffs, and would result in nearly every item imported from China facing a duty.
Then, President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping reached a truce at a summit in Osaka, Japan, in late June and these tariffs were placed on hold.
But by late July, the Trump administration blamed China for not moving quickly enough to purchase agricultural goods, a move that China said it hadn’t agreed to in the first place. It was after those talks in late July that the Trump administration said it would impose this round of tariffs on Sept. 1.
Now a substantial part of those tariffs is delayed.
The USTR also said that it would have an exclusion process for the newest round of tariffs, meaning that individual companies will have the ability to avoid the duties if they successfully make the case that their business would be unduly harmed.
Write to Josh Zumbrun at Josh.Zumbrun@wsj.com
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-will-delay-some-tariffs-against-china-11565704420
2019-08-13 14:46:00Z
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