The tariffs, if implemented, could dramatically raise prices for American consumers on everything from gas to automobiles to agricultural products. The U.S. is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent U.S. Census data.
Perdue, if confirmed, will have to negotiate a difficult set of issues that goes beyond trade.
Washington and Beijing have long had deep differences on the support China has given to Russia during its war in Ukraine, human rights issues, technology and Taiwan, the self-ruled democracy that Beijing claims as its own.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a meeting with outgoing President Joe Biden last month that Beijing stood “ready to work with a new U.S. administration.” But Xi also warned that a stable China-U.S. relationship was critical not only to the two nations but to the “future and destiny of humanity.”
“Make the wise choice,” Xi cautioned during his November meeting with Biden on the sidelines of an international summit in Peru. “Keep exploring the right way for two major countries to get along well with each other.”
Trump’s relationship with Xi started well during his first term before becoming strained over disputes about trade and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump seems particularly focused on using tariffs as a pressure point on Xi, even threatening he would use tariffs as a cudgel to pressure Beijing to crack down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl in Mexico that is illegally sold in the United States.
A second Trump administration is expected to test U.S.-China relations even more than the Republican’s first term when the U.S. imposed tariffs on more than $360 billion in Chinese products.
That brought Beijing to the negotiating table, and in 2020, the two sides signed a trade deal in which China committed to improve intellectual property rights and buy an extra $200 billion of American goods. A couple years later, a research group showed that China had bought essentially none of the goods it had promised.
Before Trump’s return to power, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, had been diversifying their sourcing away from China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to cut imports from China by as much as 45% next year.
Trump also filled out more of his immigration team on Thursday, as he promises mass deportations and border crackdowns.
He said he’s nominating former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott to head Customs and Border Protection. Scott, a career official, was appointed head of the border agency in January 2020 and enthusiastically embraced then-President Trump’s policies, particularly on building a U.S.-Mexico border wall. He was forced out by the Biden administration.
Trump also said he’d nominate Caleb Vitello as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that, among other things, arrests migrants in the U.S. illegally. Vitello is a career ICE official with over 23 years in the agency and most recently has been the assistant director for firearms and tactical programs.
The president-elect named Brandon Judd, the head of the Border Patrol Union, as ambassador to Chile. Judd has been a longtime supporter of Trump, appearing with him during his visits to the U.S.-Mexico border. He notably supported a Senate immigration bill championed by Biden that Trump sank in part because he didn’t want to give Democrats an election-year win on the issue.