US-China agency urges US action against China in WTO

20 October 2004 19:24  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (CNI)--An independent US agency monitoring US-China trade said Wednesday the US should immediately demand World Trade Organization (WTO) action against China for undervaluation of its currency.

 

Richard D’Amato, chairman of the US-China Commission (USCC), charged in a letter to Congress that “the Chinese are ripping the bedrock of our manufacturing base out from under us, and the government in Washington is doing next to nothing to stop it.”

 

Formally titled the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the USCC said today that its new survey of the impact of US-China trade on key US manufacturing sectors finds that “Unfair Chinese trade policies are having a devastating impact on manufacturing and employment” in the US.

 

Chief among China’s unfair trade policies, said USCC, are its “artificially undervalued currency, export subsidies, dumping and other practices inconsistent with WTO requirements.”

 

USCC said it is urging the Bush administration to “immediately pursue a WTO action against China regarding the undervaluation of its currency.”  Months of US-China bilateral talks on this issue, said USCC, “have failed thus far to yield positive results.”

 

“We feel,” the commission statement said, “that the Treasury Department and the US Trade Representative (USTR) should immediately file a WTO complaint, and if such action is not forthcoming, Congress should move to enact pending legislative measures to force such action.”

 

In addition to the currency issue, USCC said US manufacturers and exporters have become “heavily disadvantaged” by the terms of China’s 2001 WTO accession agreement.  USCC charged that many areas of that agreement “impose dramatically unequal tariffs on Chinese and US goods,” including a Chinese tariff on US automobiles of as much as 50% while the US tariff on Chinese autos and related parts averages 2.5%.

 

“China has developed at a pace far faster than was envisaged at the [2001] signing of the WTO accession agreement,” the USCC said, “and these unequal tariff settings now heavily disadvantage US exporters, risk import markets here and are no longer supportable.”

 

USCC said the US government “should expeditiously examine the potential for rectifying this situation as part of the Doha Round negotiations.”

 

The USCC is an independent US agency established by Congress in 2000 to review the national security implications of trade and economic ties between the US and China.

By: Joe Kamalick
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