If you work in business, one of the things you're probably interested in protecting is your intellectual property. One country known to create duplicates of items and to sell them to consumers throughout the world is China. For those looking to protect their rights, this is unacceptable but something that was hard to stop.
Today, around 40 percent of the imports into the United States come through Los Angeles and Long Beach. Shipments from China are on the rise, but now, tariffs will slow them down. Imports from China include toys, electronics and other items. Tariffs aren't always bad, but these will add up to 25 percent onto the cost of goods at the border when they come from China.
Why the sudden tariffs? It's because of China's advancement in some industries and its propensity to participate in intellectual property theft. The tariff, which is punitive, aims to penalize the country for those actions. Interestingly, as the world's second-largest economy, China isn't backing down and will counter-tariff goods from the United States. All told, up to 90 percent of goods coming from China could have tariffs placed on them, which is bad for consumers but does encourage those businesses to stop practices infringing on American copyrights and property rights.
The government does want to step in to stop the abuse of intellectual property rights, but in this case, you have to look at the economic consequences. Despite that, businesses do have a right to enforce their trademarks and copyrights, so that they are not taken advantage of in the global market.
On behalf of Crockett & Crockett posted on Tuesday, July 3, 2018.