The Trump administration is “turbocharging” an initiative to remove global industrial supply chains from China as it weighs new tariffs to punish Beijing for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, according to officials familiar with US planning, reported Reuters.
President Donald Trump, who has stepped up recent attacks on China ahead of the Nov. 3 US presidential election, has long pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas. Now, economic destruction and the US coronavirus death toll are driving a government-wide push to move US production and supply chain dependency away from China, even if it goes to other more friendly nations instead, current and former senior US administration officials said.
“We’ve been working on (reducing the reliance of our supply chains in China) over the last few years but we are now turbo-charging that initiative,” Keith Krach, undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment at the State Department told Reuters.
The US Commerce Department, State and other agencies are looking for ways to push companies to move both sourcing and manufacturing out of China. Tax incentives and potential re-shoring subsidies are among measures being considered to spur changes, the current and former officials told Reuters.