![]() It was done in a pretty provocative way with a lot of confrontational chest thumping, which I think drew some concerns both internationally and domestically, and I'm putting it diplomatically. KATHERINE TAI: I think it is important to distinguish between the reason why the tariffs were imposed from how the tariffs were imposed. Katherine Tai is the Biden administration's top trade official. And he doesn't talk about these tariffs, but he has kept them. He highlights his subsidies to lure factories back from overseas, but he doesn't get into the nitty-gritty of trade policy. KHALID: Biden is now running for president again on a vision of making more things in America. We're going after China in the wrong way. Agriculture lost billions of dollars that taxpayers had to pay. JOE BIDEN: Who said Trump's idea is a good one?īIDEN: Some - two or three people. In the summer of 2020, our former colleague Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked then-candidate Biden about using Trump's tariffs to counter China. businesses complained they would lose out to foreign competitors, and Democrats piled on Trump for being erratic and haphazard. KHALID: Economists warned that Americans would pay the price. TRUMP: The theft of American jobs and wealth has come to an end. When Trump first launched this trade war with China, it was a shock to the economic system. Instead of manufacturing more products in America, Digre is now making fewer things in America. KHALID: Economists say that's the thing about tariffs. But the strange thing is when Digre imports a speaker fully made in China, he only faces a 7.5% tariff.ĭIGRE: In many cases, what that meant is that more of our product is being built in China now than before the tariffs. KHALID: The 25% tariff on all these little parts adds up. ![]() He's on the hook, whether or not he sells the speakers.ĭIGRE: We pay a tariff on every part of this speaker except for the magnet, and there's, like, 14 different parts that make up a speaker. And Digre, not China, gets a bill from the U.S. KHALID: That's because MISCO imports a lot of its parts from China. Well, part of the reason that hasn't happened is that we're spending our time finding alternative sources to China. KHALID: He points to a large area of the factory floor sitting empty.ĭIGRE: This should be loaded with equipment right now. But he says they could be making more.ĭIGRE: This is where I would like to build more production lines. KHALID: Digre takes me out to the factory floor that produces two to three thousand speakers a day. Four years ago, Digre moved the company into a spacious new facility that now employs nearly a hundred people.ĭIGRE: We're very committed to American manufacturing of loudspeakers, so we built this big facility with a big factory floor. KHALID: MISCO was a storefront business started by Digre's parents after World War II. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Time for takeoff. The company makes all kinds of speakers - for subway cars.ĪUTOMATED VOICE: Step back. KHALID: Dan Digre is the president and CEO of the Minneapolis Speaker Company, known as MISCO for short. To understand why that is, I talked to policymakers, economists and even went out to a factory floor in Minnesota.ĭAN DIGRE: Right now, we're building a five-inch speaker. KHALID: Two and a half years into the Biden presidency, those taxes are still here. In 2018, former President Donald Trump launched a trade war with China, eventually slapping tariffs on more than $300 billion worth of imports.ĭONALD TRUMP: For many years, China has been taking out hundreds of billions of dollars a year and rebuilding China. So many things we use every day come from China. Made in America may be a catchy political slogan, but it's a lot more complicated than it sounds. ![]() With Secretary of State Antony Blinken in China this weekend for high-level talks, we wanted to take a closer look at America's relationship with that country, especially around trade.
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