Us Footwear Retailers Look To Reduce Import Tariffs To Boost Retail Sales

In order to reduce domestic

The competitive pressure of manufacturers from low cost imported shoes abroad, the US footwear importers went to (2013) to pay 2 billion 500 million dollars to the US government for this purpose.

But the fact is that the amount of employment created by the American shoe industry is only a drop in the bucket.

So the US shoe distributors and Retailers Association (FDRA) urged Congress to pass legislation and free trade terms to cut tens of millions of dollars in import tariffs in the next few years.

In late October this year (2014), FDRA chairman Matt Priest said at the annual footwear industry distribution and Tariff Conference held in Long Beach, California: "these are tools that can be used to reduce tariffs."

Priest said, (2013) the United States imported 2 billion 300 million pairs.

On average, every American consumes 7.3 pairs of shoes every year. Besides a few high-end professional shoes, the domestic retail shoes basically come from imports.

In the past, import tariffs were designed to regulate competition between industries and other low price import tariff industries.

However, the import tariff of shoes is much higher than that of other imported products, and even exceeds the tax burden of domestic products.

Priest illustrates, for example, that there is no need to pay tariffs on the import of mobile phones. The import duty of tobacco is 2.4%, the import tariff of automobiles is 2.5%, and the import tariffs of shoes are different from shoes, but the average tariff is about 10.1%.

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, while Indonesia accounted for 4%. Other countries including Mexico, Italy, India, Brazil, Domin Ni Fagafaga, Thailand and Kampuchea accounted for no more than 1%.

Although the United States has signed free trade agreements with many other countries, these countries are basically not the major producers of footwear.

Priest said, "the TPP agreement may change."

Last year, the US government collected from the negotiating countries of the TPP agreement.

The total tariff is $364 million, of which about 362 million US dollars are imported from Vietnam.

The TPP negotiations are expected to end in early 2015 and be implemented in 2017.

The terms of the footwear products will be reduced by about $617 million.

In addition, the renewal of the generalized preferential tariff system and the adoption of a number of tariff bill legislation will reduce the tariff levying of footwear products.

Economic studies show that import prices are directly related to the number of footwear products purchased.

When prices rise, consumers buy less shoes, but when prices fall, sales increase significantly.