"Katherine Tai, the United States trade representative, is
expected to begin talking with her Chinese counterparts in the coming days
about the country’s failure to live up to its agreements, senior administration
officials said. Officials did not rule out the possibility of imposing further
tariffs on China if talks with did not produce the desired results, warning
Beijing that they would use all available tools to defend the United States
from state-directed industrial policies that harm workers of the United States.
The Biden administration has been drawing up an
investigation into China’s use of subsidies under Section 301 of U.S. trade
law. If it is carried out, that inquiry could result in additional tariffs on
China, according to people familiar with the plans.
In excerpts that were released on Monday morning in
Washington from a planned speech later in the morning, Ms. Tai said that, “For
too long, China’s lack of adherence to global trading norms has undercut the
prosperity of Americans and others around the world.”
“We continue to have serious concerns with China’s
state-centered and nonmarket trade practices that were not addressed in the
Phase 1 deal,” she added.
Last week, Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, pointed to
China’s blocking of its airlines from buying “tens of billions of dollars” of
products from Boeing.
“The Chinese need to play by the rules,” Ms. Raimondo said
in an interview with NPR
last week. “We need to hold their feet to the fire and hold them accountable.”
In addition to the tariffs on Chinese goods, the president
has maintained restrictions on the ability of Chinese companies to access U.S.
technology and expanded the list of Chinese
officials under sanctions by the United States for their role in
undermining Hong Kong’s democratic institutions.
Mr. Trump’s deal halted the trade war, but it did not put an
end to economic hostilities. China still maintains tariffs on 58.3 percent of
its exports from the United States; the United States imposes tariffs on 66.4
percent of the products it brings in from China, according to Mr. Bown.
China’s leaders have also doubled down on the kinds of
domestic industrial subsidies that the United States has long objected to. They
have greatly expanded programs, started more than a decade ago, aimed at
eliminating their need to buy computer chips and passenger jets — two of the
United States’ main exports to China — among other industrial products.
The Biden administration has been exploring ways to persuade
China to limit its broad industrial subsidies, but that will be difficult. The
George W. Bush, Obama and Trump administrations all tried with little success for
ways to coax China to abandon its long-running use of subsidies to domestic
producers as a tool to wean itself from any reliance on imports.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has called for making sure that
other countries remain dependent on China for key goods, so that they will not
threaten to halt their own sales to China. The United States has done so over
issues like surveillance, forced labor and the crackdown on democracy advocates
in Hong Kong.
“The dependence of the international industrial chain on our
country has formed a powerful countermeasure and deterrent capability for
foreign parties to artificially cut off supply,” Mr. Xi said in a speech last
year.
In the call on Sunday, Biden administration officials
acknowledged that talks might not persuade China to abandon its increasingly
authoritarian, state-centered approach. So instead, they said, the
administration’s primary emphasis will be on building the competitiveness of
the U.S. economy, working with allies and diversifying markets to limit the
impact of Beijing’s harmful trade practices."
Why does not the European Union fight for the well-being of our workers against communist China by diversifying our supply chains and imposing tariffs on Chinese goods? Kubilius, what, are you sleeping in the European Parliament again?
