Reciprocal Trade Act Introduced in Senate
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., have introduced a companion bill to the House's U.S. Reciprocal Trade Act (see 1901240017).
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Graham framed the bill, which would give the president the authority to raise tariffs to match trading partners' levels, as supporting manufacturers. In the press release announcing S. 2409, Graham said: "I am extremely pleased to be working with Senator Joe Manchin on a long-overdue reform of America’s trading system. This bill is simple in concept and powerful in impact. Our purpose is clear -- whatever tariffs are placed on products from the United States will have an equal tariff placed on goods from that country. With the passage of this bill, the President of the United States now and forever will be able to negotiate tariff arrangements with other countries from a position of strength."
Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., who led the bill in the House, issued a press release Aug. 2 lauding the Senate bill. "China applies higher tariffs on 85% of American products and India on 90%. This prevents American exporters from selling their goods to more than one-third of the world’s population,” he said.
Conservative and libertarian think tanks criticized the bill back in January, when Duffy introduced it. Clark Packard, trade counsel at the R Street Institute, wrote: "It is not actually true that the United States generally imposes much lower tariffs than major trading partners. While U.S. tariffs are lower on certain products, it also levies tariffs on other products well in excess of America’s trading partners. Cherry-picking individual products obscures the reality that average tariffs are basically equivalent across the world’s largest economies." Packard noted that the average tariff for U.S. imports is 1.7 percent; China's is 3.5 percent; Japan's is 2.5 percent and the European Union's is 2 percent.