White House Manufacturing Policy Advisor, Peter Navarro, has written an op-ed warning about a new bill under construction in congress [BILL HERE] that seeks to stop President Trump from blocking the ‘de minimis loophole’ on imported goods.
Previously, various shippers and transport companies like UPS and Fed-X had lobbied congress to retain a loophole on customs and duties allowing items valued less than $800 to enter the USA without tariffs. They were joined by ecommerce outlets like Amazon, Alibaba, Temu and Shein to keep cheap foreign goods flowing into the U.S. without passing through customs declarations.
President Trump stopped the de minimis loophole on China and Hong Kong and then globally.
As noted by Navarro, “the threshold for the exemption hit a staggering $800 per package — by far the highest in the world. Europe’s is closer to $150. Japan’s is under $70. China’s general threshold is in the single digits. The U.S. wasn’t “aligned with global norms.” We were the outlier, and a very expensive one.”
Now, Navarro is warning that congress is seeking to subvert the Trump position on imports and go back to allowing cheap foreign goods flood the U.S. market at a level that creates chaos in customs enforcement and facilitates the flow of illegal drugs and narcotics back through the system.
(The Hill) – […] Their bill is simultaneously a poster child for big money politics and a breathtaking insult to the public’s intelligence. It assumes voters won’t read past the title, won’t remember why de minimis was killed in the first place, and won’t connect the dots between lobbying disclosures, campaign checks, and a legislative resurrection of a loophole that nearly destroyed U.S. trade enforcement.
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