Exclusive — Sen. Josh Hawley Promotes Raising Tariffs on China: ‘Rebuild the Middle Class’

Jack Knudsen / Breitbart News

The United States must bring back the jobs “globalists sent overseas” to China in order to “rebuild the middle class,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Breitbart News on Sunday. 

Hawley detailed how raising tariffs on China would help rebuild industry in the United States. The senator introduced a bill in May called “Raising Tariffs on Imports from China Act” which would require the president to impose an additional duty of 25 percent on all goods imported from China if a bilateral deficit is recorded during the preceding calendar year. He introduced another bill this year that would revoke China’s normal trade relations status and subject imports from China to a higher base tariff rate. 

“What [higher tariffs on China] would achieve is getting jobs back in this country. What it would achieve is bringing industry back to America,” Hawley said during an interview in West Palm Beach, Florida, at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference. 

“We need to rebuild our industry in this nation. We need good blue-collar jobs that you can raise a family on, and we need to rebuild our communities. What’s happened is, since we gave China most favored nation status and basically extremely low tariffs, they have taken 4 million jobs from us — 4 million since the year 2000. I mean, it’s time to reverse that and bring all of those jobs home,” he said. 

Hawley said doing so would help “rebuild the middle class” by giving Americans “a chance to get good-paying jobs again.”

“Those jobs in production and manufacturing that the globalists sent overseas, pay more than jobs in retail or service, which is what they’ve tried to push middle class people into,” he said. “We need good paying jobs in the middle of this country and all around this country that people can raise a family on.”

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Twitter @thekat_hamilton.

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