HARDLY a day goes by right now without U.S. business groups calling on the White House to suspend tariffs on Chinese goods in an effort to help them stem the growing challenges faced by the COVID-19 outbreak.

On Wednesday morning, Americans for Free Trade, a group of more than 160 business associations urged Donald Trump to consider relief from duties as one of the emergency measures his administration is rolling out.

“These tariffs are taxes that Americans pay,” the group said.

Hours later, the U.S. president publicly slashed those hopes.

“There’s no reason to do that. China is paying us billions and billions of dollars in tariffs,” Trump said in a news conference. “I can’t imagine Americans asking for that.”

Over the course of his presidency, Trump has imposed tariffs on a total of more than US$400 billion in goods, ranging from Chinese apparel imports and French cheeses to European aircraft. Economists say those duties are either absorbed by companies or added to the price tag for U.S. consumers, meaning they’re not paid by China as the White House often claims.

Trump didn’t rule out, however, that China might request relief. “It could be that China asks for a suspension or something. We’ll see what happens.”

Complicating the matter is that many of the same small- and medium-size firms such as retailers or manufacturers that were hurt by Trump’s tariff battles are also now suffering from the economic fallout of COVID-19.

U.S. business representatives admit it’s not clear that targeted tariff cuts would have a significant impact on the broader economic outlook but eliminating their levies certainly wouldn’t hurt, they said. (SD-Agencies)