WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of State has issued a statement saying that The Office of the United States Trade Representative has restored previously extended product exemptions from U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports, including certain car components, that had previously been extended.
As of Wednesday, the International Trade Administration (ITA) said that it has reinstated 352 of the 549 valid exemptions from Section 301 tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on more than $350 billion worth of Chinese imports.
A request for public comment was issued by the office in October on whether it should reinstate previously extended exclusions on 549 import product categories, which was followed by consultation with other federal authorities. The office’s decision was made as a result of that request.
Product exclusions for the majority of the products expired in 2020, with the remainder of the exclusions expiring in 2017. The reintroduced exclusions are effective as of October 12, 2021, and they will remain in effect until December 31, 2021.
It contains a variety of car equipment, including vehicle-specific switches, back-up cameras, cooling pumps for internal combustion engines, and position or speed sensors for gearboxes.
Several factors were taken into consideration by the trade office in its decision to reinstate some exclusions, including whether the product is available in the United States and whether there have been any changes to the global supply chain since September 2018, when then-President Donald Trump first imposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of imports from Chinese companies.
According to a report published in 2021 by the Government Accountability Office, the U.S. trade representative denied approximately 46,000 — or 87 percent — of the 53,000 exclusion requests it received from 2018 to 2020, primarily because the company or other U.S. interests failed to demonstrate that tariffs would cause severe economic harm to them or other U.S. interests.
According to the study, the United States Trade Representative did not prolong a majority of the tariff exemptions that were granted. However, according to U.S. trade officials, “no single factor was critical in determining whether a request was granted or denied.”
According to a publicly available docket, the Trump administration refused many exclusion petitions from the auto industry, including those from interiors supplier Yanfeng, key Toyota supplier Denso Corp., as well as suppliers Magna International, Robert Bosch, and Lear Corp.
M&E Manufacturing Association, which represents more than 1,000 car components manufacturers in the United States, had requested the Biden administration to open an exclusion procedure for a larger variety of items, which the government refused to do.
According to Automotive News, the first list of 549 exemptions under consideration did not include the vast variety of motor vehicle items that are subject to tariffs, which the organisation explained at the time in October.
As Ann Wilson, MEMA’s Senior Vice President for Government Affairs, said at the time, “we believe tariffs are a tool, but they should not be seen as the sole one available for addressing America’s international competitiveness.”
MEMA did not react to a request for comment on the reintroduced product exclusions within 24 hours of receiving it.