Low-cost products hit hardest by tariffs, report says
Imports of low-cost items such as polyester shirts and drinking glasses face the steepest U.S. tariffs, punishing poor consumers without benefiting American manufacturers, Bloomberg reported.
“Home goods are the most heavily taxed products, and the cheapest goods are taxed most heavily,” Edward Gresser, director of the ProgressiveEconomy project in Washington, D.C., said in a study released yesterday.
Many of those goods, such as sneakers costing less than $3 a pair, are no longer made in the United States, so the protection isn’t saving any jobs, Gresser told Bloomberg.
He combed through the U.S. tariff schedule to find the products with the highest import duties. Home goods face tariffs 20 times the average U.S. duty, raising $14 billion a year in revenue for the U.S. Treasury. That accounts for two-thirds of all tariff revenue.
The findings, released by the nonprofit GlobalWorks Foundation, are scheduled to be discussed today with lawmakers. Two bills in Congress could lift some tariffs for goods not made in the United States, one for footwear and the other for hiking shoes and other outdoor wear.