The Semiconductor Industry Association is seeking to reverse Trump-era tariffs on Chinese chips and components, which the SIA says "exacerbate the ongoing chip shortage and slow our economy."
In comments filed Dec. 1 with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the SIA said the tariffs "have resulted in higher prices and exacerbated the harm to U.S. consumers and manufacturers of automobiles, appliances, medical devices and other U.S. industrial and technology products.
In October, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under President Joe Biden opened a comment period to consider whether to reinstate products excluded from a list of Chinese imports into the United States that are subject to a 25 percent tariff.
The list includes relatively inexpensive printed circuit boards, header connectors and ring terminals, but the SIA wants to add dozens of other electronic components that have never been excluded from tariffs, such as diodes, transistors, storage devices and machine tools from China that are necessary for chip manufacturing.
Ironically, the SIA noted, most chips imported from China are developed and manufactured in factories owned and operated by U.S. semiconductor companies." U.S. semiconductor companies are harmed, not China's indigenous semiconductor companies," the SIA said in its filing.
SIA accounts for 98 percent of all U.S. semiconductor companies. Some questionable products were exempted from tariffs, but those exclusions were allowed to expire under the Trump administration." This was not helped by the previous administration's decision to deny or terminate product exclusions covering critical semiconductor ...... category," SIA said.
The SIA noted that semiconductor-related products from China fell from $2.5 billion in 2017, then to $1.5 billion by 2020 when tariffs were first imposed in 2018.
"The tariffs are raising manufacturing costs for a wide range of downstream industries in the U.S. that rely on semiconductor technology, including the industry sectors outlined in the Made in China 2025 program that the 301 tariffs are intended to assist: ICT, robotics, industrial machinery, new materials, and electric vehicles," the filing said. The tariffs raise the cost of manufacturing industrial and technology products in the United States, disrupt the industrial supply chain, and undermine the [Biden] administration's "Rebuild It Better" goal of bringing production and jobs back to this country and expanding good-paying opportunities for American workers.