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U.S. firms to Trump: Don’t raise tariffs on more Chinese goods

In this Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, photo, a man stands near a poster depicting a mural of U.S. President Donald Trump stating that all American costumers will be charged 25 percent more than others starting from the day president Trump started the trade war against China, on display outside a restaurant in Guangzhou in south China's Guangdong province. The recent trade war between the world's two biggest economies has forced many multinational companies to reschedule purchases and rethink where they buy materials and parts to try to dodge or blunt the effects of tit-for-tat tariffs between Washington and Beijing. (Color China Photo via AP)
In this Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, photo, a man stands near a poster depicting a mural of U.S. President Donald Trump stating that all American costumers will be charged 25 percent more than others starting from the day president Trump started the trade war against China, on display outside a restaurant in Guangzhou in south China's Guangdong province. The recent trade war between the world's two biggest economies has forced many multinational companies to reschedule purchases and rethink where they buy materials and parts to try to dodge or blunt the effects of tit-for-tat tariffs between Washington and Beijing. (Color China Photo via AP) In this Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, photo, a man stands near a poster depicting a mural of U.S. President Donald Trump stating that all American costumers will be charged 25 percent more than others starting from the day president Trump started the trade war against China, on display outside a restaurant in Guangzhou in south China's Guangdong province. The recent trade war between the world's two biggest economies has forced many multinational companies to reschedule purchases and rethink where they buy materials and parts to try to dodge or blunt the effects of tit-for-tat tariffs between Washington and Beijing. (Color China Photo via AP)

By Associated Press 6 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – Fishermen off the Alaskan coast. A Florida maker of boat trailers. A building materials distributor in Tennessee.

Those and hundreds of other American businesses are delivering the same plea to President Donald Trump as he considers imposing tariffs on nearly 40 percent of imported Chinese goods:

Don’t do it.

The Trump administration will hold six days of hearings starting Monday in Washington on the next barrage in an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies: Trump’s proposed tariffs of 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion in Chinese goods that could kick in as early as next month.

photo A worker casts a shadow on a board panel as he sets up an e-commerce electrical company’s promotion booth which sells Huawei mobile devices, at a shopping mall in Beijing, Thursday, Aug, 16, 2018. China is sending a trade envoy to Washington in a renewed effort to end a worsening tariff dispute that has raised worries it will chill global economic growth. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Once in effect, the tariffs would immediately inflate the prices that American companies would have to pay for Chinese components they need to build their products. Those companies would have to decide whether to pass those costs on to their customers or absorb the higher prices themselves.