FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden holds a press conference about his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping before the start of the APEC summit in WoodsideWASHINGTON - U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled a bundle of steep tariff increases on an array of Chinese imports including electric vehicles, computer chips and medical products, risking an election-year standoff with Beijing in a bid to woo voters who give his economic policies low marks.
"China's using the same playbook it has before to power its own growth at the expense of others by continuing to invest, despite excess Chinese capacity and flooding global markets with exports that are underpriced due to unfair practices," White House National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard told reporters on a conference call.
Biden has struggled to convince voters of the efficacy of his economic policies despite a backdrop of low unemployment and above-trend economic growth. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month showed Trump had a 7 percentage-point edge over Biden on the economy.Analysts have warned that a trade tiff could raise costs for EVs overall, hurting Biden's climate goals and his aim to create manufacturing jobs.
China has said the tariffs are counterproductive and risk inflaming tensions. Trump's broader imposition of tariffs during his 2017-2021 presidency kicked off a tariff war with China. More tariffs will follow in 2025 and 2026 on semiconductors, whose tariff rate will double to 50%, as well as lithium-ion batteries that are not used in elective vehicles, graphite and permanent magnets as well as rubber medical and surgical gloves.
NEW YORK — Donald Trump's fixer-turned-foe, Michael Cohen, directly implicated the former president in a hush money scheme Monday, telling jurors that his celebrity client approved hefty payouts to stifle stories about sex that he feared could be harmful to his 2016 White House campaign. “You handle it,” Cohen quoted Trump as telling him after learning that a doorman had come forward with a claim that Trump had fathered a child out-of-wedlock.