Thread: Enormous Number Of Trade Barriers In China, US offical Says

'Enormous number' of trade barriers in China, U.S. official says
Bloomberg News, The Associated PressPublished: March 29, 2007


BEIJING: U.S. businesses are having a hard time operating in China because of significant trade barriers that remain in force despite efforts by Beijing to respect its World Trade Organization commitments, a U.S. trade official said Thursday.

The official, Franklin Lavin, said that while China and the United States had a positive relationship overall and though Beijing had "by and large honored" its World Trade Organization commitments," there were still "a cluster of issues" challenging commercial ties between the two countries.

"There are an enormous number of market-access barriers, impediments that make it more difficult for U.S. business operating in the market," Lavin told a group of entrepreneurs in Beijing.

U.S. officials have singled out China's failure to protect U.S. copyrights, national government subsidies and regulations that favor Chinese companies as methods used to limit the competitiveness of U.S. companies in China.

Lavin highlighted tensions in the aviation, steel and telecommunications industries, most of which center around charges that Chinese policy unfairly favors domestic monopolies.

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"Why not open up?", he asked.

"The world economy is moving so we should always look ahead at what barriers remain," Lavin said. "In our view there has been little to no movement in some of these areas."

In addition, China's mounting trade surplus with the United States has fueled complaints by U.S. manufacturers that Beijing intentionally keeps the yuan undervalued to give its exporters an unfair price advantage.

"There is a perception not just that there are trade barriers," Lavin said, "but somehow the Chinese aren't playing a fair game or Chinese aren't dealing with the U.S. in a way that friendly trading countries ought to deal with each other."

On Wednesday, Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said they would propose tough legislation in U.S. Congress to push China to change its currency policies.

Critics of China say its currency policies have contributed to a record $232.5 billion U.S. trade deficit and to the loss of nearly three million manufacturing jobs in the United States since President George W. Bush took office in early 2001.

China says it plans to let the yuan trade freely on world markets one day, but that doing so immediately would cause financial turmoil and damage to the Chinese economy.

U.S. Department of Commerce officials this week are pressing China to ease access to industries like pharmaceuticals, civil aviation and telephone and financial services, Lavin said.

"The atmosphere on U.S.-China trade issues is probably more negative now than any time I've ever seen," he said.



http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/29/ ... /lavin.php

They are Communist! What do we expect from them?

Our government needs to get real about China.

Dixie

Critics of China say its currency policies have contributed to a record $232.5 billion U.S. trade deficit and to the loss of nearly three million manufacturing jobs in the United States since President George W. Bush took office in early 2001.

Of course they are going to do this if US policy is to let them get away with it. The critics ought to focus their comments on the Village Idiot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue rather than the Chinese. It's that Idiot's job to deal with the Chinese.