Economic Arguments for and against US Tariffs on Chinese Goods

Assessment Task 2-Essay 1
ASSESSMENT TASK-2
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Assessment Task 2-Essay 2
Discuss the economic arguments both for and against the US’s recent imposition of tariffs on
Chinese goods.
Introduction
Tariffs are the most common and important ways of trade restriction. They serve as trade
barriers. These are the taxes imposed on both imports and exports (Krueger 2012, p.113). The
amount of money accrued from tariffs is termed as a customs duty or simply a duty. They are
utilized by a government to boost the generation of revenue and protect the home or rather the
domestic industries from the outside country competition. Tariffs are termed as the best historical
methods of trade restrictions contrary to other methods of restrictions.
We have different types of tariffs namely; an import tariff, an export tariff, an ad valorem tariff, a
specific tariff and a compound tariff (Cole, and Davies 2011, p. 480). An import tariff is a tax or
the obligation levied on the imports and it is the most common between nations. The export tariff
is basically the tax levied on exported goods which is prohibited by the United States
Constitution, however it is practiced in growing nations for the generation of the government
revenue. For Ad valorem tariff there is a constant percentage on the price of the traded
commodities or goods. Specific tariff a constant sum according to the physical appearance per
unit of the traded commodity is applied. The compound tariff is composed of both the terms of
the specific tariff and of an ad valorem tariff.
This kind of tariff imposition on Chinese goods by U.S government is an ad valorem tariff which
levies duty on all the commodities traded according to the United States Trade Representatives
(USTR) publications (Hughes, and Meckling 2017, p. 256). The USTR’s publications were in 3
Tranches which were named Annex A; Tranche 1 imposed 25% levy which was about $34
billion of imports from China effective July 2018. Trance 3; imposed an additional 25% on the

Assessment Task 2-Essay 3
second list of import levies $200 billion of all the imports from China which was effective
September 2018. Annex B listing was set to be published come January 2019by additionally
increasing 25% on the commodities traded and become effective March 2019.
Arguments for the US’s recent imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods
One reason of tariffs imposition on Chinese goods by the US government is to protect the home
manufacturers from "dumping" by means of overseas corporations or governments. Dumping
endangers the financial viability of the US as the importing country. This occurs whilst a foreign
company expenses a charge in the home marketplace which is below its personal price or
beneath the fee for which it sells the object in its personal domestic marketplace. This was
brought by the action of China failing to comply with President Donald Trump's request of fair
prices of their commodities hence the tariff imposition protected that (Posen 2018, p.28).
Secondly, these tariffs were all aimed to put pressure to China to change the habit or the long
known trade practices which were undermining and hurting the America corporations for a long
while when the management believed that they had a bonus within the trade dispute and this has
made the United States assess an economic boom which includes the low unemployment rate
which had been a problem since 2000.
The imposition of these tariffs was also aimed at protection of the home industries also known as
infant industries from the foreign completion from the fast-growing industries from China
(Draper 2017, p.61). Many development guidelines specialists and businesses-specific attorneys
see it as essential to put into effect import charge lists to defend toddler domestic industries from
foreign opposition. This toddler industry technique has a negative track file. There are many
possible causes for this, a few monetary and a few political. This argument does now not expand
to all forms of manufacturers. Industries requiring excessive monetary capital have the maximum