NRF: Increased tariffs on Chinese goods would hurt consumers (chainstoreage.com)
An increase of U.S. tariffs on Chinese made goods could have a major impact on American consumers’ spending power. That's according to the National Retail Federation’s latest study, “Estimated Impacts of Changes to China’s Tariff Status,” which finds that consumers could lose $31 billion in spending power if U.S. tariffs are raised on common household products like microwaves, t-shirts, toys, footwear and more imported from China. This figure comes out to $240 per household in higher prices for widely-used items. “Many elected officials and others have expressed a growing interest in a number of trade policy and practice changes that would affect U.S. trade with China,” said NRF. “Chief among them is a proposal to terminate China’s ‘permanent normal trade relations’ (PNTR) trade status, subjecting imports from China to ‘Column 2’ tariff rates, which can be much higher than ‘normal trade relations’ rates. Some have even suggested raising the rates higher than ‘Column 2’ rates.”