President Biden has to-date chosen to retain Section 301 tariffs on over $300 billion worth of imports from China, originally imposed by President Trump. In a new insight, AAF’s Tori Smith and Tom Lee explain how these tariffs impact American consumers, and the Biden Administration’s reluctance to eliminate them.

Key points:

• This study finds that, since 2017, these tariffs have resulted in a quadrupling of the trade-weighted average tariff rate Americans pay for Chinese imports, and a doubling of the trade-weighted average tariff rate Americans pay for imports generally.
• While President Biden initially expressed opposition to these tariffs in 2020, he has declined to eliminate them despite ample opportunity.
• Removing these tariffs is an obvious and effective way to mitigate the pain of rising inflation by reducing the costs of goods Americans purchase from overseas.

Read the analysis