Tariffs on Asia: Running to stay in the same place

Research evidence excerpt

Tariffs on Asia: Running to stay in the same place

extend- nam’s Intellectual Property (IP) regime launched in May

ed period. The process to impose the first round of tariffs on (Table 1).

China took about eight months. Other concluded 301 investi- Table 1: Ongoing U.S. Section 301 investigations into Asian economies

gations into China since then include an April 2024 case on

the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors, and a Importation of Goods Structural Excess Capacity Implementation of Phase One IntellectualInvestigationPropertyon

Economy Produced and Production in

December 2024 case on the semiconductor sector. with Forced Labor Manufacturing Sectors Agreement ProtectionEnforcementand

Bangladesh ✓ ✓

Current investigations are being conducted en masse, in con- China ✓ ✓ ✓

trast to previous cases, and are moving quite rapidly, with the IndiaIndonesia ✓✓ ✓✓

ostensible objective of creating country-specific 301-tariffs to JapanKorea ✓✓ ✓✓

replace the invalidated IEEPA tariffs. Malaysia ✓ ✓

Pakistan ✓ ✗

Philippines ✓ ✗

“Forced Labour” 301s will maintain current tariff levels SingaporeSri Lanka ✓✓ ✗✓

when Section 122 expires Thailand ✓ ✓

Taiwan ✓ ✓

The administration has already completed its investigation Vietnam ✓ ✓ ✓

into sixty economies focused on imports of goods produced Source: USTR, J.P. Morgan

with “forced labor”. It alleges that by failing to effectively

Back to where we began

impose or enforce bans on forced labor imports, these econo-

mies provide foreign producers with an “artificial cost advan- Our baseline is that the various Section 301 cases will be used

tage” over American workers and businesses. to realign country-specific tariff levels very close to IEEPA

rates that were negotiated under different trade deals -- as