Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump. The US is preparing to slap a 7.5 percent tariff on Chinese goods, and the timing isn't accidental. According to a report from Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, this move is set to land just weeks before Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are scheduled to meet in Washington on September 24. The justification behind the new duty centers on allegations that China maintains excess manufacturing capacity, giving its industries an unfair edge in global markets. This new tariff would push Trump's overall second term duties on Chinese goods back up to roughly 20 percent, a threshold Beijing has previously acknowledged as consistent with its ongoing trade truce with Washington. It's worth noting that these new duties would stack on top of existing tariffs, ones originally put in place during Trump's first term and later kept alive under the Biden administration. In effect, this represents Trump's latest attempt to rebuild his protectionist trade approach after the Supreme Court struck down his earlier round of import taxes, which had targeted China along with dozens of other trading partners. At the same time, this particular move is designed to stay within the boundaries both countries already agreed to, rather than reigniting a full blown trade war. One idea currently on the table involves a bit of a workaround. Instead of announcing the 7.5 percent figure outright, officials could publish a higher official duty rate for China while simultaneously suspending part of it, effectively bringing the real world rate down to 7.5 percent. According to a person familiar with the internal discussions, this approach is still being debated, including which specific rates might get suspended and for how long. This investigation was one of two separate probes the administration launched around that time, both aimed at giving Trump's tariffs a firmer, more durable legal foundation after his earlier round of duties got struck down in court. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer addressed the delay directly in a July interview with Bloomberg Television. He explained that the excess capacity investigation is taking longer to complete than a separate probe focused on forced labor, largely because of how complex the excess capacity issue is. Greer was clear that the slower timeline has nothing to do with any effort to preserve the current truce with Beijing. Sagar is a journalist with an interest primarily in geopolitics and American domestic politics. Before joining Times Now, he wrote for Republic and Sw... View More