Tuesday, 02 Mar 2021 08:16 AM MYT
Biden’s trade team will seek to repair relations with allies, and defend US workers, according to the 2021 President’s Trade Agenda submitted to Congress. Reuters pic
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WASHINGTON, March 2 President Joe Biden will use “all available tools” to take on abusive trade practices by China, the US Trade Representative’s office pledged yesterday.
In addition, Biden’s trade team will seek to repair relations with allies, and defend US workers, according to the 2021 President’s Trade Agenda submitted to Congress.
Tackling the Covid-19 pandemic by securing vaccine supply chains and production is a top priority.
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Yes, the US-China trade war is still happening. Donald Trump began his presidency by investigating unfair trade practices in China, and then slapping 25 percent tariffs on the Asian nation. Four years later, those tariffs remain. Even after the Phase One trade deal (meant to be the first in a series of deals) was signed in January 2020, U.S. tariffs on Chinese products remained in place. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the trade war faded into the background, used only to highlight China’s inability to meet the conditions of the deal to purchase an additional $200 billion in American products over the 2017 level through 2021 due to the disruption from the pandemic. The trade war continues to ravage the U.S. economy even under the new Biden administration.
US-China trade deal: Biden’s team seem unlikely to relent on Beijing’s commitments
New US Trade Representative Katherine Tai says China must deliver on the purchase commitments it made in the phase one agreement signed in January last year
China agreed to buy an additional US$200 billion worth of American goods and services but sour relations and Covid-19 led to targets being missed
By David Lawder and Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Katherine Tai, President Joe Biden s top trade nominee, backed tariffs as a legitimate tool to counter China s state-driven economic model and vowed to hold Beijing to its prior commitments, while promising a sweeping new approach to U.S. trade. At her Senate confirmation hearing to become U.S. Trade Representative, Tai also called for a revamp of global trade rules to eliminate what she called gray areas exploited by China and end a race to the bottom that she said had hurt workers and the environment. For a very long time our trade policies were based on the assumption that the more we traded with each other, and more liberalized our trade, the more peace and prosperity there would be, Tai said, adding that trade liberalization in the past too often led to less prosperity, and lower labor and environmental standards.
February 26, 2021
No research is ever complete. That’s something US president Joe Biden will need to keep in mind as he attempts to overhaul the country’s supply chain. His order on Wednesday for a 100-day government review of supply chain vulnerabilities across high and low-tech industries is partly a response to pandemic shortages caused by disruptions to global trade. As factories closed during Covid-19, shipping patterns broke down and companies failed to move goods from factories to consumers.
But US companies have already been dancing around this issue for years, with limited success. Thanks to several years of rocky US-China trade disputes and China’s rising costs, global firms have weighed detangling themselves particularly from China and sourcing closer to home.