Adidas, Nike and 170 other shoe companies urge Trump to reconsider its "catastrophic" policy

In the letter issued Monday, the companies asked the president to review their tariffs on shoes made in China, saying the policy could be "catastrophic" for "business, consumers and the US economy in general."

The open letter comes a little over a week after Washington imposed new tariffs totaling more than $ 200 billion on products imported from China, which include all types of footwear. from shoes to sandals.

"On behalf of our hundreds of millions of footwear consumers and hundreds of thousands of employees, we ask you to stop this action immediately," they said.

According to the Bloomberg agency, although the shoe industry has shifted its production from China of several factors in recent years (including rising wages, changing trade policies and the moving factories to the United States). Europe), the Asian country is still a giant in footwear manufacturing.

What does the shoe industry lose in the trade war?

The shoe companies that signed the letter, which also include Puma and Clarks, claim that they are already paying high fees to import their shoes into the United States. They could therefore be higher.

In the United States, the average tariff for footwear is 11.3%, but in some cases it can reach 67.5%.

"Adding a 25% tax increase above these rates would mean that some working American families could pay close to 100% of the costs of their shoes," wrote the companies.

"It's time to end this trade war," they added.

Who pays the rates?

Trump has repeatedly badured that China will pay, but his economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, admitted last week that it is US companies that pay taxes on products imported from China.

But according to several experts, it is very likely that these additional costs will be pbaded on to US consumers in the form of higher prices.

Economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Princeton University and Columbia University estimated that taxes levied last year on a wide range of imports , ranging from steel to washing machines, were costly to American businesses and consumers. . about $ 3 billion a month in additional taxes. (BBC)