Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) is among the lawmakers fiercely lobbying President Joe Biden to cut United States tariffs on China, blaming them for inflation despite research debunking such claims.

In an op-ed this week, Kaine called on Biden to “finally” end the billions of dollars worth of Section 301 tariffs on China-made products that were first imposed by former President Trump. One of Kaine’s biggest corporate donors is Matson Inc. — the multinational shipping corporation.

Kaine writes:

Too many American families have been hurt by inflation — and we need to be pressing on all levers to lower costs for them. [Emphasis added]

That means finally rolling back former President Donald Trump’s failed tariffs — direct taxes on American families and importers that have led to tens of billions in total price increases for consumers, cost American jobs, and resulted in a trade agreement that China is failing to live up to. [Emphasis added]

…

But the administration rolling back Trump’s cost-hiking tariffs would be a fast way to reduce the prices bedeviling American families. President Biden can and must act now. [Emphasis added]

Despite Kaine’s claims, analysis by Breitbart News has shown that tariffs do not raise prices for Americans. Likewise, the latest research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) notes that there is no connection between U.S. tariffs and current inflation.

“The timing of the tariffs clearly shows no correlation with inflation and eliminating tariffs could not plausibly restrain it,” EPI researchers write. “The bulk of the tariffs were in place before 2020, yet inflation only began accelerating in March 2021. Clearly, inflation was driven by many sources besides tariffs.”

Similarly, economists admitted in the Wall Street Journal this week that cutting U.S. tariffs on China would have little-to-no impact on inflation. In Bloomberg, economists have also said cutting the tariffs with have hardly any impact on the skyrocketing inflation crushing the nation’s working and middle class.

This week, reports circulated that Biden is considering eliminating U.S. tariffs on $10 billion worth of China-made products like bicycles. That news prompted Trump to issue a statement, calling the removal of any tariffs on China a “terrible mistake.” Trump said:

Doing this would be the greatest gift that China could ever receive. Our farmers alone got $28 billion as a gift from me, that came directly out of the tariffs because of the way they were abused by China. Taking these tariffs off would be a clear signal that the United States is weak, ineffective, and doing business as usual.

From 2001 to 2018, U.S. free trade with China eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the economy — 2.8 million of which were lost in American manufacturing. During that same period, at least 50,000 American manufacturing plants closed down.

Those massive job losses have coincided with a booming U.S.-China trade deficit. In 1985, before China entered the WTO, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2019, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $345 billion.

Meanwhile, a study from 2019 found that permanent U.S. tariffs of 25 percent on all Chinese imports would create more than a million American jobs in five years. American manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy, as every manufacturing job supports an additional 7.4 American jobs in other industries.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.