Escalation of the trade dispute with the US expected
April 17.04.2012, XNUMX - According to Chinese officials, the trade dispute with the USA is likely to escalate further, as the USA is now actively searching for “unfair trade practices” with an agency.
China and the United States will experience more tensions in the trade of high-value industrial products as Washington protects its domestic industries, Chinese officials said Sunday.
Tensions are "sure to rise" as China and the US focus on high value and emerging industries. That focus includes new energies and materials, said Zhang Xiangchen, director of trade investigations at the Department of Commerce. Another department official said this trend is causing US protectionism to shift from traditional sectors to nascent ones. "We can predict that US trade investigations will increasingly target Chinese exports of new energies," noted Yu Benlin, deputy director of the ministerial department for fair foreign trade.
Both officials made their comments at the Canton Fair opening forum in Guangzhou last Sunday. The fair, also known as the Chinese Import and Export Fair, is an important indicator for the trading sector. In the past, the US has often accused China of unfairly subsidizing traditional export products such as steel and chemical products. In the last two years, Washington has conducted several investigations on Chinese products related to new energies. One of these investigations was in 2010 against the Chinese strategies in the market for new energies and then over a period of 16 months anti-dumping investigations were conducted against Chinese solar cells and wind power plants, so Yu. This has reduced exports by about 2,3 billion euros.
Exporters suffer
US protectionism is weakening Chinese exporters and industry, Yu said. The United States, China's second largest trading partner, has conducted 73 trade investigations against China since 2007, accounting for roughly 16 percent of all investigations against China worldwide, Yu said. These closed cases in the USA affect a total of around 8 billion euros. A new sign that the US is increasing its protectionism is the Interagency Trade Enforcement Center, which opened in February and is supposed to look for so-called "unfair trade practices" by major American trading partners such as China, Yu said.
US trade investigations can sometimes lead other countries to open such investigations, Yu warned. For example, when the US imposed anti-dumping duties on Chinese coated paper in 2006, Brazil, Argentina and Thailand also opened similar investigative procedures which “massively weakened Chinese exporters.” Trade disputes with China will now arise more often, Yu said. Increased trade protectionism in the countries that are the main buyers of Chinese exports is therefore a hard blow to exporters, who are already suffering due to weaker global demand.
Source: China Daily
