President Joe Biden and his administration announced a series of tariffs on imported goods, entirely directed against China. While it is claimed they will protect and increase American jobs, and keep American factories in America, in reality they are integrated into the City of London-Wall Street’s economic and military war against China and Russia.
The tariffs are reported today in a White House fact sheet, “President Biden Takes Action to Protect American Workers and Businesses from China’s Unfair Trade Practices,” which states: “China’s unfair trade practices concerning technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation are threatening American business and workers.” At his signing, Biden was flanked by auto workers, steel workers, etc.
Biden will increase tariffs this year under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, from 25% to100% on Chinese Electric Vehicles (EVs); from 7.5% to 25% on lithium-ion EV batteries and other battery parts, and from 25% to 50% on photovoltaic cells used to make solar panels. Some critical minerals will have their tariffs raised from nothing to 25%. As well, the tariffs on Chinese ship-to-shore cranes will rise from zero to 25%, those on syringes and needles will rise from nothing now to 50%, and some personal protective equipment (PPE) used in medical facilities will jump from as little as zero now to 25%.
There will also be further tariffs in 2025 and 2026 on Chinese lithium-ion batteries that are not used in electric vehicles; semiconductors; graphite and permanent magnets; and rubber medical surgical gloves. Biden will impose these tariffs on top of the ones that Trump imposed during 2017-21.
Three points are missed or deliberately covered up in all the media propaganda that “America is getting tough.” First, while the tariffs will almost certainly get more severe, initially the new Biden tariffs only affect reportedly $18 billion in imported Chinese goods, including steel and aluminum, as well as the goods already named above. In 2023, the U.S. imported $427 billion in goods from China; thus, the imports would only cover 4.2% of the equivalent of the U.S. import of Chinese goods of 2023. The tariffs will likely get more severe.
Second, the Biden tariffs are reported as his attempt to “out-Trump Trump” on the tariff issue. While for the Biden campaign, as viewed internally, this may seem to be true, as Biden’s polling numbers on the economy are poor, and this is fed to Biden as a way to “improve” his polling numbers, from the City of London-Wall Street standpoint, they are playing off Biden versus Trump versus Congress, with each of the three entities being told the other two entities are doing more. This will create an upward spiral of tariff increase proposals, and is meant to decouple the U.S. from China, at the very moment that it is necessary, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has pointed out, to integrate the U.S. and China into a new world security and development architecture.
Third, the tariffs have nothing to do with the intent or purpose of Alexander Hamilton. The tariffs will not improve the physical economy, which is steeply collapsing. Piercing the speculative financial bubble, and replacing it with the policies of Lyndon LaRouche, Diane Sare and Jose Vega will.
