Biden’s Tariffs Will Affect Face Masks, Surgical Gloves, Needles

Plus, the New York Times gets religion

Biden has proposed to increase the tariff on solar cells like the ones on this rooftop panel to 50 percent from 25 percent.

A professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Casey Mulligan, who was chief economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump administration, links to a summary by the law firm Foley Hoag about President Biden’s proposed tariff increases. Here’s the table, via Foley Hoag:

The electric car and solar cells stuff has gotten some press attention, but I haven’t seen as much about face masks, syringes and needles, or rubber medical and surgical gloves. 

A Biden White House fact sheet explains: “The tariff rates on syringes and needles will increase from 0% to 50% in 2024. For certain personal protective equipment (PPE), including certain respirators and face masks, the tariff rates will increase from 0–7.5% to 25% in 2024. Tariffs on rubber medical and surgical gloves will increase from 7.5% to 25% in 2026.”

Biden’s going all over the country bragging about how he’s lowering prices on insulin, but somehow he’s neglecting to mention that he’ll be raising taxes on needles used to inject the insulin and other medicines, in violation of his campaign promise of no tax increases on any taxpayer earning less than $400,000 a year.

Mulligan observes: “When the tariff rate went from 0 to 25%, #econtwitter was apoplectic. Now that it goes from 25 to 50% ... crickets. Are deadweight costs still convex?” 

Mulligan is a shrewd observer. However, he tweets like an economist. To translate, it’s almost like the academic economists are in the tank for Biden. Where is Larry Summers warning that the Biden tariffs will be inflationary, as he’s been warning about Trump’s proposed tariffs (many of which, Trump says, are may be negotiated downward if other countries reciprocally lower their barriers to American exports)? And never mind #econtwitter, where is the whole press corps that learned in college economics class all about how these tariffs create deadweight losses?