More than 170 American shoe manufacturers and retailers, including such well-known athletic shoe brands as Nike, Under Armour and Adidas, urged President Donald Trump on Tuesday to exempt footwear from any further tariffs he imposes on imported goods from China.
The lobby for the shoe industry, the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, told Trump in a letter that his proposed 25 percent tariff on shoes imported from China "would be catastrophic for our consumers, our companies and the American economy as a whole." The industry imported $11.4 billion worth of shoes from China last year, although some manufacturers have been shifting production elsewhere, especially to Vietnam and Cambodia.
It said the proposed tariffs on shoes made in China could cost U.S. consumers more than $7 billion annually on top of existing levies.
"There should be no misunderstanding that U.S. consumers pay for tariffs on products that are imported," the 173 companies said, rejecting Trump's frequent erroneous statement that China pays the tariffs and that the money goes directly to the U.S. Treasury.
Trump has been engaged in a string of reciprocal tariff increases with China on imported goods arriving in each other's ports as the world's two biggest economies have tried for months — unsuccessfully so far — to negotiate a new trade pact.
After Trump imposed new 25 percent taxes on $200 billion worth of Chinese products earlier this month, he also set in motion plans to impose a new round of levies on virtually all Chinese imports, another $300 billion worth of goods, including shoe imports, clothing and electronics.
The U.S. leader said that if American companies did not like the tariffs on Chinese imports, they could move their production inside the United States or to another country whose manufactured products are not taxed when they are sent to the U.S. But the footwear lobby rejected Trump's suggestion.
"Footwear is a very capital-intensive industry, with years of planning required to make sourcing decisions, and companies cannot simply move factories to adjust to these changes," the industry told Trump.
The U.S. Trade Representative's office has published a list of products that would be covered by the expanded tariffs and set a hearing for June 17.