Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Monday he would apply a 200 percent tariff on John Deere imports if the farm machinery company moves its production to Mexico.
«As you know, they announced a few days ago that they’re going to move a lot of their manufacturing business to Mexico,» Trump said at an event on agriculture and China in Pennsylvania.
«I just notified John Deere right now that if they do that, we’re going to put a 200% tariff on everything they want to sell to the United States.»
U.S. details plan to protect auto sector and avoid second crisis over China
Lael Brainard, the White House’s top economic adviser, laid out a sweeping plan by President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday to safeguard the U.S. auto sector from what he sees as unfair trade practices by China.
«China is flooding world markets with a wave of car exports due to its own overcapacity. We already saw something similar in the Chinese crisis of the early 2000s, which hurt our manufacturing communities, and this administration is determined that there will not be a second Chinese crisis,» Brainard said at the Economic Club of Detroit.
«That means putting safeguards in place now, before a flood of cars at unfairly low prices erodes the ability of the U.S. auto industry to compete fairly on the world stage,» he added at the Detroit event.
Relatively few Chinese-made cars and trucks are imported into the United States.
The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday proposed banning Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on U.S. roads due to national security considerations, a move that would effectively ban nearly all Chinese cars from entering the U.S. market.
«Americans should drive any car they choose, whether it’s gas, hybrid or electric,» Brainard said. «But, if they choose to drive an EV (electric vehicle), we want to make sure that it’s made in the United States, and not in China.»
China and US in economic threat. Image internet.
Brainard’s appearance comes at a time when the fate of the auto industry and pressure from China have become a major issue in the 2024 presidential election, with Republican candidate Donald Trump suggesting Beijing could dominate auto production in the future.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration set steep tariff hikes on Chinese imports, including a 100% tariff on electric vehicles, to bolster protection of strategic industries from China’s state-owned industrial practices.
The White House intends to ensure that Chinese automakers cannot set up factories in Mexico to circumvent steep tariffs.
«We’re going to have to work with our partners in Canada and Mexico to address China’s overcapacity in electric vehicles as we look to the USMCA midterm review in 2026,» Brainard said of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement.
The presidential adviser said U.S. officials are already in talks with those in Mexico and that they share Washington’s concerns about how China uses Mexico as a platform to export to the United States at artificially low prices, she said