Representatives of the U.S. retreading industry who have banded together with the slogan “Retread Instead”, will gather June 20 in Washington to lobby Congress to impose tariffs on Chinese-sourced truck and bus tires that the group blames for undermining their industry.
The Retread Instead coalition’s visit to Capitol Hill will happen at the same time as the Tire Industry Association’s annual Federal Lobby Day event, at which members come to Washington to meet with Congress in order to inform, educate and make requests regarding the most important issues facing the tire industry.
Retread Instead is a coalition of retread industry supporters that seeks to inform and educate on the environmental and economic benefits of supporting retreading instead of buying, selling and running low quality Chinese non-retreadable tires.
The Retread Instead initiative grew out of a petition drive in early 2017. The effort, coordinated by Marangoni Tread, was intended to spur the Trump administration to reconsider the U.S. Commerce Department’s decision to not impose duties on imports of truck tires from China.
That petition fell short of the necessary 100,000 signatures that would have compelled the White House to take action, but served to draw attention to the issue.
Retread Instead supports imposing tariffs on commercial Chinese truck and bus tires that are imported because China is a “non-market economy” that dumps low quality non-retreadable truck tires into the U.S. below fair market value thus undermining the retread industry, the coalition said.
