Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) expressed hope that America could utilize additional tariffs to improve imported products’ quality rather than trying to beat the costs of “Chinese slave labor.”
As the election approaches in three weeks, both the Trump and Harris campaigns are disputing one another’s policies when it comes to tariffs on China. Former President Donald Trump has proposed a tariff as high as 20%, which the Harris campaign refers to as a “sales tax.”
“William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt built the American industrial powerhouse that we have today using tariffs to ensure that American workers got a fair deal and foreign competitors weren’t able to undercut the wages of our workers,” Vance explained on Fox News Sunday. “Think about if you are a foreign competitor working in China, using literal Chinese labor at three dollars a day, and the American middle-class worker’s never going to be able to compete on cost alone. We can compete on quality with those foreign slave laborers in China.”
The Biden administration banned imports from Changzhou Guanghui Food Ingredients and Baowu Group Xinjiang Bayi Iron and Steel over allegations of forced labor. Allegedly both companies were not abiding by Biden’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, which went into effect in June 2022.
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As recently as last month, Biden raised his own tariffs against China, specifically in the auto industry. Trump has similarly proposed a 100% tariff on Chinese-made cars.
Currently, the U.S. is behind 18% of manufacturing global domestic products. Meanwhile, China holds 30%.