The Biden administration has imposed tariffs on $18 billion worth of annual imports from China, including semiconductors, electric vehicles, steel, and other sectors. With growing trade tensions between China and the United States, this move raises questions about its potential impact on the upcoming election.

According to Yahoo Finance's Senior Columnist Rick Newman, the tariffs "do fit with what Biden has been doing his whole term, which is incentivizing the development of certain industries within the United States." He explains that the tariffs are intended to make those goods originating from China more expensive, thereby promoting domestic manufacturing of these products.

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This post was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

Turning now to President Biden announcing new tariffs on $18 billion worth of Chinese goods.

Imports on EVs batteries, semiconductors and other materials made in China will see levies double or triple to as high as 100%.

In the case of S President Biden, also keeping in place $300 billion worth of levies from former President Trump that he to put on imports from China in 2018 and 2019.

So is Biden's decision motivated as much by the upcoming election as it is by US China relations.

Joining us now we want to bring in our very own Rick Newman, and you're the perfect person to ask, What do you think two things are going on here?

So the Biden tariffs, First of all, they're pretty small.

They're pretty small relative to what Trump did and analysts I've been following, saying they might be so small that China does not even retaliate against these tariffs, which will be good.

Um, so first of all, they do fit with what Biden has been doing his whole term, which is incentivizing the development of certain industries here in the United States or the redevelopment.

If you will reshoring and we know what those are.

I mean, it's semiconductors that that was the chips Act that he signed in 2022 electric vehicle technology, green energy, the green energy transition and all the the supply chains that go in that that was part of the Inflation Product Act in 2022.

So what Biden is doing now is he's just making it more expensive to import those types of things from China and pretty minor.

I mean, electric vehicles, for example.

There are practically no Chinese electric vehicles on sale in the United States at all these days, so the 100% tariff there is meant to keep them out.

That's the first thing number two definitely targeted at swing state politics because that's, you know, these are the key states.

Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.

Think about those states.

There's a lot of manufacturing there, auto industry and other types of manufacturing.

Biden wants to be able to campaign in those states and say, I'm looking out for the workers here, so that's another thing this is about, and this is kind of in line with some of the work that we saw from former President Trump.

To a degree, I'm curious which strategy seems to be more effective at winning voters from those candidates.

Who knows?

I mean, I mean, we'll find out.

I guess anyone knows that.

I mean, you know, for as much as we, you know, we geek out on these policies in the news industry.

I mean, there's been some really interesting research showing that people don't have any idea what Biden has actually done in office.

They are just tuned out.

Um, I mean, people are busy, you know, some people are working two jobs.

They're trying to figure out how to, you know, manage the kids, and you guys know know the drill, right?

I mean, so people aren't tuned to, uh, you know, Biden's YouTube channel to figure out what he's doing about Chinese tariffs.

So, you know, the real question is, will this break through enough?

And, uh, we're gonna talk.

We've talked about this already.

We'll talk about a lot more in the next six months.

But you know, this election is going to come down to a really small group of swing voters in probably five or six swing states.

So, uh, whatever, either one of these candidates can do to win an extra.

I mean, we're talking about, you know, 5000 voters, potentially, if you can just get a few people from this union shop or that union shop to show up, maybe get their spouses family members to show up and vote for you.

That sort of stuff could swing the election, So that's a big factor in what's going on here.

All right, Rick, thanks so much for bringing all of that down.

You are going to be joining me now.

And just about actually, two hours from now.

We've got live coverage of President Biden's speech that's coming up at 12:10 p.m. Eastern time this afternoon.

You won't want to miss that.