A veteran adviser to Donald Trump is proposing that the 60% tariffs that the President-elect has vowed to impose on Chinese goods also apply to goods from any country that pass through a new port that Beijing has built in Peru.
The duties should apply to goods from China or countries in South America that pass through the new deep-water port Chancay, a town 60km north of Lima, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, an adviser to the Trump transition team who served as senior director for the Western Hemisphere on the White House National Security Council in his first administration.
“Any product going through Chancay or any Chinese-owned or controlled port in the region should be subject to 60% tariff, as if the product was from China,” Claver-Carone said Saturday in a telephone interview.
The duty would help guard against transshipment, Claver-Carone said. That’s the process through which goods from one country — in this case China — enter another and then get re-exported to their final destination market — the US — at lower tariff rates than direct shipments.
Transshipment in Latin America has been of particular concern to the US with regard to ports in Mexico, which overtook China as America’s top trading partner following Trump’s trade war with Beijing.
But such tariffs also should make nations think twice about allowing Beijing to build a port in their territory, he said.
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“It’s a shot across the bow” to any country that partners on maritime infrastructure with China, including Mexico, he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping inaugurated the new Chancay port in an elaborate ceremony with his Peruvian counterpart on Nov 14. Xi boasted that the facility will establish a direct line from Chancay to Shanghai, cutting shipping times and lowering logistics costs.
It’s unclear how much of the shipments from the port would be destined for the US, given Peru and China are seeking to get goods from South America to Asia, and to import consumer goods meant for Peru and its neighbors.
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At a business event Nov 15, Ren Hongbin, a former Chinese Commerce Ministry official, said he thinks the port may help facilitate trade between China and the US.
Xi told outgoing US President Joe Biden at a meeting in Lima on Saturday that he’s ready to work with Trump to improve the relationship between the world’s biggest economies. The pair are in Peru for a summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders.
