On Chinese Textiles, US Tariffs Act Again

Release time:

2018-08-06

On August 1, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported, citing government sources familiar with the matter, that the Trump administration plans to impose tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports, from the initial set of 10% to 25%, but these tariffs will not take effect until after the public comment period.

According to data from the Reuters Evening News, in early July, the U.S. government imposed a 25% tariff on $34 billion of goods imported from China. Washington is likely to impose tariffs on another $16 billion in Chinese imports in the coming weeks, and Trump has warned that he could eventually impose tariffs on more than $500 billion in Chinese goods, about the total amount of U.S. imports from China last year.

According to the preliminary arrangement of the International Trade Office of the China Textile Federation, the products initially set to impose a 10% tariff exceed 900 tax numbers according to the US standard, covering a very wide range, covering almost all products in Chapter HS50-60. Including all yarns, fabrics/fabrics of various raw materials (cotton, wool, silk, hemp and chemical fibers), as well as industrial textiles and some textile machinery products, the annual export value to the United States is about US $4 billion. According to the preliminary arrangement of the China Textile Industry Federation, about 927 textile products are involved. This is the United States and Europe since the abolition of textile and clothing quotas, China's textile industry foreign trade encountered the biggest challenge.

China Textile Industry Federation said that textile and clothing is one of the important categories of China's export. China's textile industry provides a large number of high-quality products with high cost performance for American consumers, and creates many jobs for the US textile industry and related industries. At present, the Sino-US trade friction is escalating, and the entire textile industry is willing to take national interests as the fundamental position, further deepen the transformation and upgrading, vigorously strengthen the development of responsibility, and resolve the negative impact of unreasonable US tax increases.

1 The volume of export trade in products involved in the tax.

According to US OTEXA statistics, China's textile and apparel exports to the US totaled US $38.74 billion in 2017. Among them, the export of clothing is 27.03 billion US dollars, and the export of textiles and manufactured goods is 11.71 billion US dollars (including yarn 0.22 billion US dollars, fabrics 1.84 billion US dollars, and home textiles, industrial textiles and other manufactured goods 9.64 billion US dollars).

According to ITC caliber, the export amount of Chapter HS50-60 involving tax increase to the United States in 2017 is as follows:

2 Focus on cracking down on the middle and upper reaches of China's textile industry chain

It should be emphasized that the United States has focused on cracking down on the middle and upper reaches of China's textile industry chain, and has not taken any tariff measures for clothing products and most home textiles directly facing American consumers.

List of textile and garment products involved: