Grassley: Trump needs to focus on free trade agreements, not tariffs

NEW HARTFORD — Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says President-elect Donald Trump needs to start negotiating new free trade agreements instead of proposing to slap a 10 to 20 percent blanket tariff on all imports, with additional tariffs of 60 to 100 percent on goods brought in from China. 

Grassley says, “I hope he would realize that there’s no conflict between negotiating free trade agreements and doing tariffs what he calls.  I just wish he would use a different term than tariffs. We have them in law in the United States already, they’re called countervailing duties, and countervailing duties are meant to level the playing field for some countries including China, but every other country that might subsidize a product coming to the United States, we can put on a tariff to level the playing field equal to what their subsidy was.”

Grassley wishes Trump would talk about addressing trade issues with the existing countervailing duties system instead of talking about more tariffs.   “I think that it makes more sense and easy for people to understand it, and it wouldn’t sound like he was trying to put in a whole new system of what you call tariffs, because you can use countervailing duties, and we’ve done it regularly. I don’t think we’ve done it enough, but we have done it regularly over a period of several decades. I’d say at least going back to the 1963 trade legislation.”

Some economists say that Trump’s plan would have the effect of raising prices on everyday goods.