By David Lawder and Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – After eight months of waiting for the promised full review of trade policy with China by US trade representative Katherine Tai, some US industry and experts have complained about the plan’s lack of details regarding negotiations or schedule.
Announcing his plan on Monday, Tai, President Joe Biden’s top trade official, promised to talk with Chinese officials about the Asian country’s failure to comply with the terms of “Phase 1” of former President Donald’s trade agreement. Trump, and the reactivation of a process to grant tariff exemptions on Chinese imports.
“She’s going to be reunited with China and that’s a good thing,” said Mary Lovely, a commercial economist at Syracuse University who attended Tai’s speech in Washington. “But your whole plan seems to be, ‘I’m going to have a conversation.’
What happens next “depends on how the conversation goes,” said Tai, a former trade attorney for the House Means and Resources Committee, who has pledged to center Biden’s trade policy around workers.
Tai’s speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies won the support of Democratic lawmakers, unions and also a former commercial official in the Trump administration.
However, industries that have suffered for more than three years from US tariffs on Chinese imports amounting to billions of dollars were waiting for details on which products could get a tariff exemption.
Instead, Monday’s speech raised concerns that Tai could implement new tariff actions after saying he will keep the “Section 301” investigations as an option.
“The long-awaited announcement proved that the Biden government’s commercial strategy in China is, at best, meager and will inflict even more unnecessary damage on the US economy and retail supply chains,” said David French, senior vice president, National Federation of Retail.
(By David Lawder, Andrea Shalal and Michael Martina)
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