Reversing tariffs and carving out exemptions for small businesses and essential goods are a top priority of America’s largest business lobby group, an executive told a group of Salem business leaders Monday.

Chris Eyler, vice president of congressional and public affairs with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, spoke during a lunch Monday put on by the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce at the Salem Convention Center, addressing several hundred local business and government officials.

The U.S. Chamber is considered one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the U.S. and plays a major role influencing government policy on business and labor issues through meeting with legislators, litigation and other work. It has historically been a reliable supporter of Republican politicians, but in recent years has clashed with some wings of the party more over trade and immigration policy.

Eyler, who is a lobbyist representing western U.S. states, spent the bulk of his presentation laying out the negative impacts of tariffs on American small businesses and Oregon in particular. 

“Our economy, this nation did not become the wealthiest, largest economy in the world by simply trading amongst ourselves. We did it by selling to the 95% of the world’s customers who live outside our borders,” he said.

He also addressed the U.S. Chamber’s other top priority — maintaining tax cuts passed during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2017, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

“We simply cannot afford, given how shaky things are in our economy right now, to see taxes go up across the board on individuals as well as businesses,” he said.

Eyler walked the audience through current tariff rates, including the deal the president announced Monday with China to lower both countries’ tariff rates.

“This slide could very well change by the end of this presentation,” Eyler said, joking about the unpredictability of U.S. trade policy under Trump.

But even the deal, which drops the U.S. tariff on Chinese imports to 10%, leaves tariffs four times higher than they were in January, Eyler said. And rapidly shifting policy is causing its own economic harm, he said.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. Businesses don’t know where to invest. They don’t know … if they should build a facility here in the U.S., or if they should build overseas. They don’t know where they should put their money,” he said. “This is why we have seen expectations for economic conditions to get worse go up dramatically in just the past couple months. People just don’t know what to expect, so they’re sitting on their money.”

He said the U.S. economy relies on trade, with 41 million American jobs supported by international trade, and one quarter of U.S. farmland used to grow crops for export. In Oregon, one in five jobs — over half a million workers — are supported by trade, he said, and the state exports about $36 billion annually to 190 countries.

Tariffs harm exporters because countries levy retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports, driving down sales overseas. Some Oregon business leaders said in a roundtable with Gov. Tina Kotek in April that they had already paid millions to import products and were seeing interest in their own exports dry up.

Eyler said levying taxes on imports does not help bolster U.S. manufacturing, which faces labor shortages. Trump’s immigration policies are worsening labor shortages as well, he said.

“He says he wants to help domestic manufacturers. But 56% of all imports into the US are the components, raw materials, things that domestic manufacturers need to make things here,” Eyler said.

Eyler said the Chamber doesn’t expect Trump to reverse tariff policy entirely, given the president’s affinity for import taxes as a policy tool. He said the Chamber’s focus is on trying to encourage trade agreements with other countries and carving out tariff exceptions that would allow small businesses to avoid paying more. 

The U.S. should also exempt from tariffs goods like coffee, where demand is far higher than the small amount Hawaii and Puerto Rico are able to grow domestically.

His comments drew some pushback from audience members during a question and answer session, with several attendees commenting that the U.S. needs to address trade deficits and take steps to rein in federal spending and address growing American national debt.

One questioner suggested manufacturers would not face labor shortages if U.S. unemployment benefits were less generous.

Eyler said the Chamber agrees steps need to be taken to address federal spending and make Social Security and Medicare fiscally sustainable given that far fewer workers are paying into the systems now for each retiree than when the programs were created nearly a century ago.

But he said a lack of affordable child care is a major reason many working-age Americans are not seeking jobs, and that requires policy solutions to address.

Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.

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