Lifting China tariffs to help ease U.S. inflation: former official

Customers shop at a Dollar Tree store in New York, the United States, Nov. 26, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

"Tariffs are just making that more expensive, which leads to a bigger issue politically," said Gary Cohn, an economic adviser to former U.S. President Donald Trump.

SINGAPORE, March 2 (Xinhua) -- A former U.S. official recently urged U.S. President Joe Biden's administration to lift tariffs on Chinese goods to help ease domestic inflation.

Americans are experiencing the strongest inflation since the early 1980s, as the consumer price index climbed 7.5 percent annually over the 12 months to January 2022, Singaporean media quoted Bloomberg as reporting.

"Tariffs are just making that more expensive, which leads to a bigger issue politically," said Gary Cohn, an economic adviser to former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Cohn made the remarks at the TPM22 Conference organized by The Journal of Commerce, a U.S. magazine, in California on Monday.

Cohn, now vice-chairman at International Business Machines Corp., quitted his role as Trump's adviser in 2018 when the previous U.S. administration began slapping tariffs on a broad range of Chinese products.