Removing tariffs would devastate the global supply chain and destabilize domestic industries including renewables.

Section 232 and 301 tariffs have nothing to do with the current inflationary spike. The tariffs—implemented in 2018—had little effect on U.S. prices, and inflation only spiked after the pandemic recession began in February 2020.

Eliminating tariffs would not significantly reduce inflation. At best, removing these tariffs would result in a one-time price decrease of 0.2%—a drop in the bucket when consumer prices have risen by more than three times as much, on average, every month since January 2021, driven largely by pandemic-related global supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine.

Removing these tariffs would undermine U.S. steel and aluminum industries and increase domestic dependence on unstable supply chains. Tariff removal would result in job losses, plant closures, cancellations of planned investments, and further destabilize the U.S. manufacturing base at a time of intensifying strategic importance for good jobs, national security, and the race to green industry.

With dwindling options on inflation and a mounting chorus of special interest business lobbies, the Biden-Harris administration is reportedly considering removing some Trump-era tariffs in an effort to moderate rising prices in the U.S. economy.

Tempting as such an action may seem, it is certain to have unnoticeable effects on overall prices—at best. And the action will ensure, moving forward, that our supply chains will be even more vulnerable to the kinds of disruption risks we are seeing play out right now. These tariffs offer a tangible policy response to a real-world economy rife with market failures that invalidate the predictions of canonical economic trade models used to argue against keeping the tariffs.

In the absence of a more comprehensive approach to U.S. industrial strategy, the tariffs are working to resuscitate America’s industrial base and have done so with no meaningful adverse impacts on prices. Pulling the rug from under this rebuild now, without first putting in place other policy solutions to address costly market failures, risks undoing this progress and jeopardizing the financial conditions in industries that are critical to building the infrastructure and renewable energy investments needed to power future economic growth.