As the United States struggles to deal with soaring gasoline prices and inflation, President Joe Biden’s administration is considering removing some tariffs on China and possibly pausing the federal gas tax, top officials said on Sunday.
Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen said some tariffs on China inherited from former President Donald Trump’s administration served no strategic purpose, and that Biden was considering eliminating them to reduce inflation.
According to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, the president is considering suspending the federal gas tax in order to lower prices, and that such a move is “not off the table.”
The comments come as the Biden administration struggles to tackle record-high gasoline prices and inflation, now at its highest in 40 years.
In the midst of a bitter trade war between the world’s two largest economies, Biden has said he is considering removing some of his predecessor’s tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods in 2018 and 2019.
Yellen, however, described inflation as being “unacceptably high” and added that she expected the economy to slow.
The possibility that the United States, the world’s largest economy, will enter a recession has become a growing concern for CEOs, the Federal Reserve, and the Biden administration.
The surge in inflation has turned nearly all Federal Reserve policymakers into hawks, with only one voting against the central bank’s biggest rate hike in more than a quarter-century earlier this week.
