Congress quietly expands tariffs and foreign-investment review in single bill
H.R. 4978 — Secure Trade Act · Filed by Jared Golden (D-ME) · 1 cosponsor · Introduced Aug 15, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill imposes a 10% baseline tariff on all imports into the US, with the President able to reduce it for specific sectors if deemed in the national interest. It establishes much higher tariffs on Chinese goods—a minimum of 35% on non-strategic items and 100% on strategic goods (semiconductors, critical minerals, defense-related items)—and creates a tariff-rate quota system allowing limited duty-free imports from China before steep penalties kick in. It also expands the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) to review foreign real-estate purchases and factory construction by countries of concern, and changes how Chinese imports are valued for tariff purposes.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core mechanism is a 10% baseline tariff on all imports, with a separate, much steeper tariff regime (35–100%) targeting Chinese goods. It is fundamentally a trade-policy instrument, not a safety or security measure, despite invoking national security language in the waiver and China-specific sections.
- Section 204 amends the Defense Production Act to expand CFIUS jurisdiction to cover greenfield/brownfield foreign investments and real-estate purchases by countries of concern. This is substantively unrelated to tariff policy and appears to be a separate foreign-investment control measure bundled into a trade bill.
What the text implies
- The 10% baseline tariff applies to ALL imports, including raw materials and intermediate goods used by US manufacturers. This will raise production costs for domestic firms and may trigger retaliatory tariffs from trading partners, harming US exporters.
- The tariff-rate quota system for China-only goods creates a two-tier pricing structure: goods within the quota face old rates (or phase-in rates) for 3–7 years, then jump to full duty. This creates artificial scarcity and price volatility, harming importers and consumers.
The full analysis lists 5 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
Domestic manufacturers in protected sectors (steel, semiconductors, chemicals, machinery); US agricultural producers (if tariffs on Chinese goods reduce competition); Import-competing industries lobbying for tariff protection