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US business groups claim WTO rules cannot stop unfair Chinese trade tactics

in ASIA/PRESS RELEASE/REGIONS by

US business groups expressed frustration on Wednesday with what they said are China’s efforts to tilt the economic playing field in favour of domestic companies, adding that World Trade Organisation rules are insufficient to police all of Beijing’s trade practises. US companies face increasing threats from Chinese investment rules, industrial policies, subsidies to state-owned enterprises, excess manufacturing capacity, cybersecurity regulations and forced technology transfers, the groups told a public hearing held by the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office. Josh Kallmer, senior vice-president of global policy at the Information Technology Industry Council, said China had woven a “tapestry” of rules and policies that places foreign companies at a disadvantage and incentivises the transfer of technology. “It just in general puts a thumb on the competitive scale in a way that significantly and profoundly affects US-based and foreign companies”, said Kallmer, who was representing a coalition of technology groups from semiconductors to software. Jeremie Waterman, the US Chamber of Commerce’s vice-president for Greater China, said China’s restrictive investment regime and other industrial policies requiring technology transfers in recent years have made China a less attractive place to invest for foreign firms, and not all of these policies can be changed with full WTO compliance. This has been made worse by China’s “Made in China 2025” plan, which aims to supplant foreign products and technologies with domestic ones and new cybersecurity regulations that put foreign information technology products at a disadvantage, Waterman said. “The ballast has become less stable in recent years” in the US-China economic relationship, he added.

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