Trump administration pushing to rip global supply chains from China: officials

Reuters 05.04.2020 1 min read
Trump administration pushing to rip global supply chains from China: officials

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration is “turbocharging an initiative to remove global industrial supply chains from China as it weighs new tariffs to punish Beijing for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, according to officials familiar with U.S. planning.

President Donald Trump, who has stepped up recent attacks on China ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election, has long pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas.

Now, economic destruction and the U.S. coronavirus death toll are driving a government-wide push to move U.S. production and supply chain dependency away from China, even if it goes to other more friendly nations instead, current and former senior U.S. administration officials said.

“We’ve been working on (reducing the reliance of our supply chains in China) over the last few years but we are now turbo-charging that initiative, Keith Krach, undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment at the State Department told Reuters.

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