Biden plans to slap 15% tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminium as part of trade war with Beijing started under Donald Trump

President Joe Biden will call for a tripling on steel tariffs from China in order to protect American producers from cheap imports, an announcement he will make as he courts steelworkers in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.  

He will make the announcement in a battleground state that is key to his re-election campaign and his pitch will be to an industry angry about the planned purchase of U.S. Steel by a Japanese company. 

It's also a move meant to counter his Republican rival. 

President Biden will announce increased tariffs on China in speech to U.S. steelworkers

Donald Trump, as president, imposed broad tariffs on China, and has threatened to do even more if he gets another term in the White House. 

Now both men have talked about how they will counter China as they make their pitch to voters for a second term, particularly when speaking to the blue-collar workers who can decide the November election.

Biden is pushing an economic plan to fight inflation that has raised the cost of food, goods and gas across the country. Voters have given him low marks on his handling of the economy.

Trump, meanwhile, is reminding voters that the economy was stronger under his tenure. 

'When a country just rips us off like China, then what I did is that the tariffs, and the tariffs were forcing companies back to the United States,' Trump told CNBC in March.

This week Biden is on a three-day Pennsylvania campaign swing that began in Scranton on Tuesday and will include a visit to Philadelphia on Thursday. 

As part of his announcement on Wednesday, Biden will ask the U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to increase tariffs to 25 percent on certain Chinese products - including aluminium and steel - that have tariffs 7.5 percent or no tariffs at all, administration officials said.

Additionally, he will reiterate his opposition to the proposed sale of U.S. Steel to Japan's Nippon Steel.

'It's important that U.S. Steel remains a domestically owned and operated company,' a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday. 

'The president will make that clear again. He has told the steelworkers he will have their backs and he means it.'

At a rally last weekend in Pennsylvania, Trump tore into Biden over Nippon Steel´s efforts to buy U.S. Steel, ignoring Biden's objections to the merger.

'I would not let that deal go through,' Trump said.

Biden will reiterate his opposition of the sale of U.S. Steel to a Japanese company - above U.S. Steel's Mon Valley Works Clairton Plant in Clairton, Pa

Donald Trump also has vowed to raise tariffs on China if re-elected

Biden will also announce an investigation into China's aggressive support for shipbuilders and other related industries, which unions have complained about. And he will announce a initiative to work with Mexico to block China from evading American steel tariffs by routing its exports through that country.

Biden has worked to thaw relations with Beijing, which grew tense under Trump. He met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November in San Francisco. And he's sent his senior administration officials to visit the country.

China, however, is working on countering an economic downturn of its own. Its exports, which get subsidies from Beijing amid a low-cost labor market in that country, have helped boost its economy to higher-than-expected growth.

While in Beijing last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen voiced the administration's concern that China's manufacturing overcapacity would push more goods onto the global market at artificially cheaper prices, potentially stifling competition.

'When the markets weaken, prices fall and it's our firms who go out of business, and those that are our allied countries,' she said on Tuesday. 'Chinese firms continue to receive support so that they remain.'

And Biden's administration wants to make clear they are standing up for American workers.

'China's policy-driven overcapacity poses a serious risk to the future of the American steel and aluminium industry,' National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard told reporters on a briefing call on Tuesday.

'China cannot export its way to recovery. China is simply too big to play by its own rules.'