Rubio Leads Effort to Stop Congress from Cutting U.S. Tariffs on China

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is leading an effort to stop Congress from approving plans that would cut United States tariffs on China-made products.

As Breitbart News reported, a faction of Senate Republicans and Democrats have crafted language to include in the America COMPETES Act that will cut U.S. tariffs on billions of dollars worth of China-made products.

Late Wednesday evening, the Senate voted 53-43 to support cutting U.S. tariffs on China, with 25 Senate Democrats and 18 Senate Republicans opposing the plan.

“It makes absolutely no sense to make it cheaper for Chinese companies to sell their products in America,” Rubio said in a statement. “We need to rebuild American industry, not reward companies that keep their supply chains in China.”

Rubio, as well as Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have led efforts in the Senate over the last year to oppose tariff reductions on China. The four Senators were the only ones to oppose a similar amendment last year.

Americans are overwhelmingly on Rubio’s side in regards to trade.

A new Morning Consult poll shows 73 percent of Americans support trade remedies to protect American jobs and workers from China, while 61 percent said they are more likely to back candidates for office who support tariffs on China-made products.

The poll also found that 71 percent of Americans support Section 301 tariffs on China-made products and 61 percent believe that U.S.-China free trade has made the nation overly dependent on Chinese imports.

From 2001 to 2018, U.S. free trade with China eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the economy — 2.8 million of which were lost in American manufacturing. During that same period, at least 50,000 American manufacturing plants closed down.

In one West Virginia town, 94 percent of jobs were offshored to foreign countries thanks to free trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Those massive job losses have coincided with a booming U.S.-China trade deficit. In 1985, before China entered the WTO, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2019, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $345 billion.

Meanwhile, a study from 2019 found that permanent U.S. tariffs of 25 percent on all Chinese imports would create more than a million American jobs in five years. American manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy, as every manufacturing job supports an additional 7.4 American jobs in other industries.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.