U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will hold a reception in Washington to celebrate Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
In remarks to the Washington International Trade Association, Tai said that inflation was scary and hurting Americans' pocketbooks, but was a complicated issue with many causes.
The economy is large and there are a lot of pressure points and levers in the economy, according to Tai. If we're going to take an issue like inflation and give the seriousness that it requires, our approach to tools for mitigating and addressing inflation needs to respect that it is a more complicated issue than just tariffs. Tai's remarks indicate that there is a debate within the Biden administration about whether to cut some U.S. citizens. The section 301 duties on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports of up to 25% were imposed by former President Donald Trump.
Tai said it was important for the Biden administration to come up with a thoughtful, deliberate approach to how we manage this relationship with Beijing. She said that the administration's most important responsibilities is to figure out how to get this relationship right and nothing about this relationship is easy.
Yellen argued that they hurt U.S. consumers and businesses, and that they could have an effect on reducing prices, and that Tai has been in conflict with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen over the future of Section 301 tariffs.