A group of more than 170 companies, including the multinationals Nike and Adidas, today called on President Donald Trump to eliminate footwear from the list of Chinese products whose imports to the country could be affected by tariffs of 25%.
“The proposed additional 25% footwear tariffs would be catastrophic for our consumers, our companies and the US economy in general,” the companies wrote in a letter sent to Trump.
This message from the footwear sector comes after last Monday the Office of the Foreign Trade Representative (USTR, for its acronym in English) announced a plan that includes imposing taxes of 25% on Chinese imports worth 300,000 million of dollars.
Of these possible taxes, pharmaceutical products and some sanitary products, as well as “critical minerals” would be excluded, but imports of meat and livestock products, dairy products, fruit and vegetables, auto parts and clothing, such as footwear.
Nike and Adidas said in their letter that the additional sanctions “will disproportionately harm the people and families of the working class.”
In fact, an estimate from the United States Footwear Distributors and Retailers organization points out that the imposition of 25% tariffs could increase the cost to its customers by about 7,000 million dollars annually.
They also justified that the companies in their sector do not have the capacity to “quickly” transfer their production from China to other countries because “years of planning” are needed to make this type of decision.
“While our industry has been moving away from China for some time, footwear is a very capital-intensive industry, with years of planning necessary to make supply decisions, and companies can not simply move factories to adapt to these changes, “they underlined.
“It’s time to end this commercial war,” they added.
USA In early May, it increased tariffs for several Chinese imports of more than 5,000 products, valued at some 200,000 million dollars.
These products were subject to a tax of 10% and from now on their tariff will rise to 25%.
This blip in the negotiations between the US and China reflects the complexity of the process, in which Trump seeks to force structural changes in Beijing’s economy to, among other things, protect the intellectual property of US companies and facilitate their access to the Chinese market. (EFEUSA)
