In order to reduce the competitive pressure of domestic shoe manufacturers from low cost imported shoes abroad, American footwear importers paid a total tariff of $2 billion 500 million to the US government last year. But the fact is that the amount of employment created by the American shoe industry is only a drop in the bucket.

So the American shoe distributors and Retailers Association urged Congress to pass legislation and free trade terms to cut tens of millions of dollars in import tariffs in the next few years. "These are tools that can be used to cut tariffs." FDRA chairman Matt Priest held this year's association year in Long Beach, California. footwear industry The distribution and Tariff Conference said.

Last year, the United States imported 2 billion 300 million pairs of shoes, with an average of 7.3 pairs of shoes consumed by Americans per year, Priest said. Except for a few high-end professional shoes, domestic retail shoes basically come from imports. Historically, import tariffs were designed to regulate competition between industries and other low price import tariff industries. But shoes. Import duties It has already been far higher than the tariffs of other imported products, even exceeding the tax burden of domestic products.

For example, there is no need to pay tariffs on mobile phone imports. The import duty of tobacco is 2.4%, and that of automobile is 2.5%. The import tariffs of shoes vary from shoes to shoes, but the average is about 10.1%, Priest explains.

Although the market share of Chinese shoes in the United States is declining every year, it still accounted for 81% last year. Vietnam ranked second, accounting for 10% of total imports of shoes in the United States. Indonesia has a 4% share. Other countries, including Mexico, Italy, India, Brazil, Dominica, Thailand and Kampuchea, account for no more than 1%.

Although the United States has signed trade freedom agreements with many other countries, basically these countries are not the major producers of shoes. "The TPP agreement may change." Priest mentioned that the total tariff on footwear products collected by the US government from the TPP negotiators last year amounted to US $364 million, of which about 362 million US dollars were imported from Vietnam. Shoes products 。

The TPP negotiations are expected to end in early 2015 and be implemented in 2017. The terms of the shoe products will be reduced by about $617 million. In addition, the renewal of the GSP and the adoption of a number of tariff bill legislation will reduce the tariff collection of footwear products.

Economic studies show that import prices are directly related to the number of shoes purchased. When prices rise, consumers buy less shoes; but once prices fall, sales increase significantly.