U.S. firms demand crackdown on tariff-evading Chinese importers

Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom

Wed, Mar 5, 2025, 3:13 PM 3 min read

By Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. needs tougher authorities to enforce commercialized laws and guarantee transgression prosecution of Chinese government-subsidized companies that circumvent U.S. tariffs by shipping goods done 3rd countries, U.S. companies said connected Wednesday.

Executives from a slate of mid-size concern companies - including makers of alloy pipes, room cabinets and overgarment hangers - said astatine an lawsuit with lawmakers connected Capitol Hill that for years the U.S. had been losing retired connected tariff gross and American companies had been forced retired of concern by Chinese firms that exploited commercialized rules.

Even erstwhile U.S. companies had won commercialized cases, they said, constricted backing for enforcement meant the Chinese firms could easy find loopholes.

"We've been forced to adjacent factories, trim employment and trim investment," said Tom Muth, enforcement vice president of Zekelman Industries, an autarkic tube and conduit producer.

"These imports travel not straight from China, but indirectly. They travel from countries similar Oman, Thailand, Vietnam and the UAE. These are each large importers of subsidized and dumped hot-rolled alloy from China," Muth said.

Milton Magnus, CEO of M&B Metal Products Company, Inc, which produces ligament garment hangers for the adust cleaning and textile industries, said his 82-year-old household concern had been warring amerciable commercialized practices by China for 22 years.

Magnus told the lawmakers, including Republican Representative Ashley Hinson and the Democratic ranking subordinate of the House of Representatives' prime committee connected China, Raja Krishnamoorthi, that his institution won an anti-dumping lawsuit against China successful 2008 but it provided small relief.

"Before the ink was adust connected the order, China was already evading the bid by transshipping done different countries, hopping from state to country, changing the names, shifting shipments, conscionable to enactment up of us," Magnus said.

The executives were speaking successful favour of a bipartisan measure that would ramp up prosecution of work evasion and different commercialized fees, called the Protecting American Industry and Labor from International Trade Crimes Act.

China's embassy successful Washington did not respond to a petition for remark connected the executives' charges.

The reintroduction of the bill, which failed to marque it to instrumentality successful the past Congress, comes arsenic President Donald Trump has launched into a caller tariff warfare with China, arsenic good arsenic Mexico and Canada.

In an code to Congress connected Tuesday, Trump said the U.S. has been "ripped disconnected for decades by astir each state connected Earth," adding that his medication would edifice to reciprocal tariffs oregon non-tariff measures for immoderate retaliation by U.S. trading partners.