Trump's China tariff plan would be 'devastating' says CTA CEO Gary Shapiro

Date:
Wed, 13 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Description:
The CES executive says his non-profit organization doesn't like tariffs from any administration.

FULL STORY

CES 2025, the massive consumer technology trade show in Las Vegas, is less
than two months away. It falls in the liminal space between a historic US Presidential Election and a new administration's very significant plans for
US trade, which could impact many of the thousands of technology companies expected at the tradeshow and the majority of US customers they serve.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the non-profit organization behind the event that often represents the industry's interests before the US government, has a message for the incoming administration: "We don't like tariffs."

Speaking at a CES 2025 preview kick-off dinner in Manhattan this week, CTA
CEO, lobbyist, and best-selling author Gary Shapiro held nothing back when I asked him about President-elect Donald Trump's plans to apply a blanket 20% tariff to all imported goods and, potentially, a special 60% tariff on
Chinese imports.

"I will to my deathbed indicate that tariffs are not paid for by the
countries involved, they're paid for by the consumers that are paying for a tax, and tariffs are a tax. It's basic economics. The fact that President
Trump found that one economist who will say that out of thousands of
economists doesn't mean anything to me."

Shapiro added that the 20% tariff likely to include Mexico and Canadian
imports will be "very inflationary and not help the economy."

Trump's more draconian Chinese tariff measure, which appears designed to
force companies to bring manufacturing back to the United States, could be,
as Shapiro and the CTA see it, even worse, calling the proposed 60% tariff potentially "devastating."

It gets worse

The impact of these tariffs could be twofold because in addition to whatever pass-along costs consumers get from the tariffed companies, the countries
being tariffed will, Shapiro told me, "hit back on us, and our exports will
be affected, as well, and we have a huge amount of exports. This is not good for the country."

Shapiro, however, is not just pointing the finger at the incoming administration. He made it clear to me that some tariffs imposed by the last Trump administration remained in place during the Biden administration. He called them "bipartisan tariffs." In his first term, Trump applied $80
billion worth of tariffs . Biden kept the majority of them in place.

Despite the dire outlook, Shapiro told me the CTA would welcome the new administration and added that there's been "no fallout" among CES 2025 exhibitors and that some business people are optimistic about the change at
the White House because the regulatory environment under Biden has been so strict. Shapiro pointed to the scuttling of Amazon's iRobot acquisition . "In
a way, there's some optimism that we'll finally be able to get to some things we should."

That, though, does not alter the CTA's position on tariffs. "We will oppose them." said Shapiro, adding, "Will we succeed? I don't know."

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/tech/trumps-china-tariff-plan-would-be-devastating-s ays-cta-ceo-gary-shapiro

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