The United States Chamber of Commerce urges the Trump Administration to immediately implement a “tariff exclusion process” to prevent the United States economy from falling into a recession and inflict “irreparable damage” to small businesses.
In a letter obtained for the first time by CNBC, the mass commercial lobbying group asked Trump’s commercial officials to automatically raise tariffs to all imports of small businesses and in all products that “cannot occur in the United States” or are not domestic advance.
The CEO letter of the Chamber, Suzanne Clark, also asked the Trump administration to establish a process for companies to quickly obtain tariff exclusions if they can demonstrate that import tariffs represent “significant risks for the employment of the United States.”
“We are deeply concerned that even if it is only a week or months to reach, many small businesses will suffer irreparable damage,” Clark wrote on the letter on Wednesday night to the Treasury Secretary, Scott Boventary Howardary Howarder.
“The Chamber requests that the Administration take imedias actions to save the small businesses in the United States and avoid a recession,” he wrote.
In an interview on Thursday morning in “Squawk on the street” by CNBC, Clark said he wrote the White House because “we were flooded at request for small businesses, for relief.”
Those business owners are “fear for the survival of their business,” he said.
Clark also explained why the Chamber should not challenge Trump’s tariffs in the Court, as others have done, he even thought that his group had sued the administration biden more than 20 times.
“We worry about government overreach” and “micrognition,” he said. “But in this case, the courts take a long time. And what the small company needs, what the whole business needs, is a more immediate relief.”
When asked at a press conference if the Trump administration is consulting the application of the Tariff Exemptions Chamber, the Deputy Director or the White House staff, Stephen Miller, suggested that it is not.
“The relief for small businesses will come in the form of the highest tax reduction in the history of the United States,” he said, referring to the Republicans’s plan to approve an important tax cutle bills this year.
Miller also said that President Donald Trump “made it clear” that the companies that invest in the United States will not face responsibility for tariffs.
Pressing to clarify that he was rejecting the idea of a short -term rate relief for small businesses, Miller said: “It is a yes in fiscal relief for small businesses. And again, it only pays the rate for the products that are made outside the United States.”
Read the full letter here.
– EAMON JAVERS DE CNBC contributed to this report.
Correction: Stephen Miller is the White House Cabinet Deputy Director. A previous version bit his name.
