May 15, 2024

Arlington, Va.— NEMA President and CEO Debra Phillips issued the following statement today in response to President Joe Biden’s review of Section 301 tariffs and announcement of new tariffs on Chinese products, components, and technologies:

“The electroindustry is leading the transition to an all-electric economy, while accounting for a full 1 percent of U.S. GDP. Last year, our industry imported $245 billion of industrial goods from 231 economies around the world, China included, making the electroindustry the second largest U.S. importer of industrial goods.

“We support the on-shoring, near-shoring and friend-shoring of critical materials in the electrical supply chain, creating new jobs to add to the nearly half a million Americans employed in all states across our industry.

“In addition, NEMA members have invested over $12 billion in domestic manufacturing to advance the energy transition.

“While we are in the midst of that transition, electrification technologies currently rely on a complex global supply chain that are disrupted by trade policies that fail to consider current domestic production constraints. While we welcome efforts to develop a resilient and secure domestic manufacturing base and supply chains, the United States government must take a balanced approach to trade and tariffs policies to achieve our shared electrification goals.  

“In our recent testimony to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on supply chain resilience, NEMA outlined steps the Administration could take to assess the impacts of these tariffs and assure that they are working in harmony with domestic electrification, resiliency and climate goals. While we share the Administration’s efforts to enforce compliance with China on matters of intellectual property and trade, the Administration should initiate a comprehensive investigation into the competitiveness impacts of Section 301 tariffs.

“As we outlined in our policy recommendations, trade policy and domestic policy should be aligned so that they are not in conflict or work at cross purposes. For example, steel, aluminum, battery components, and additional products impacted by these tariffs are essential to meeting the Administration’s goal of building 500,000 EV charging stations in the United States by 2030, meeting our emissions reductions goals, and modernizing our grid to handle growing climate impacts.

Finally, we continue to urge USTR and the Administration to release the statutory four-year review of the Section 301 tariffs, permanently extend all existing exclusions to ensure manufacturing competitiveness and economic growth, and initiate a thoughtful and robust exclusion process for electrical manufacturing and clean energy technologies on the new Section 301 tariffs announced today.”