US Businesses Warn “Reckoning Is Coming” If Trump Moves Ahead With $200BN China Tariffs
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Fri, 09/07/2018
With the deadline for the comment period for Trump’s proposed tariffs on an additional $200 billion of Chinese goods passing last night, investors and businesses around the world are bracing for a long-anticipated financial gut punch as President Trump prepares to move ahead with the levies – damn the torpedoes.
And while everybody and their pet rabbit who has been paying even the slightest attention to the flow of headlines over the past three months should have known by now that the comment period was merely a formality, many American tech companies (many of whom will experience a significant disruption to their supply chains as a result of the tariffs) are making a last-ditch effort to persuade Trump to give trade talks another shot.
But as far as the angles go, the coalition has picked a good one: In their letter, several tech giants warned that the levies could adversely impact the US’s ability to roll out key tech priorities like the next-generation wireless technology known as 5G.
Here’s Bloomberg:
On Thursday, Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co., and other technology companies sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer urging the administration to avoid imposing more tariffs. By increasing duties on telecommunications networking gear, the administration would raise the cost of accessing the Internet and slow the roll-out of next-generation wireless technologies, the companies said.
Manufacturers and small and mid-sized firms, in particular, can’t quickly adjust and the tariffs imposed so far haven’t led to any meaningful concessions, a coalition of the National Retail Federation and 150 organizations said in separate comments to Lighthizer. The administration should cease further tariffs actions and give another shot at talks for a trade deal with with China, it said.
“Tit-for-tat tariffs are counterproductive and so far have only produced increased costs for American businesses, farmers, importers, exporters and consumers,” the coalition said.
Yet even as the administration wages battles on several fronts, including Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings and its latest war with the press, Trump has showed no signs of backing down. In a recent interview, Trump reiterated his claim that China has taken advantage of the US for too long, and that it’s time for America to assert itself and put a stop to predatory trade practices. The tariffs could be formally imposed as soon as Friday, though it’s also likely that they will be implemented in stages, as was the last round of tariffs on $50 billion of imports. Trump has pursued the tariffs as retaliation for China’s coerced expropriation of proprietary tech from US firms seeking to do business on the Mainland. And of course, China has vowed to respond with tariffs on some $60 billion of US goods.
The Rest…HERE
