Obama Opens Broad Challenge to China Export Aid in WTO Case

[pampango]

Source: Bloomberg

The Obama administration opened a broad challenge to China’s subsidy program, which it said unfairly benefits exports of a range of products from shrimp to steel while harming U.S. companies and workers.

The U.S. initiated the case Wednesday at the World Trade Organization accusing China of making companies in seven industries eligible for incentives for computer or training services at 179 domestic “demonstration bases” across the country, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said.

“All of these services, provided for free or at a discount, undermine fair competition,” Froman said at a Washington news conference with seven U.S. House members.

The 850,000-member United Steelworkers of America praised Froman for the new case against China. Union members’ “jobs have been lost or are at risk because of China’s practices,” USW President Leo Gerard said in an e-mailed statement. “It appears that China will stop at nothing to continue to grow its economy at our expense.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-11/u-s-tells-wto-china-unfairly-aids-its-industries-with-subsidies

[djean111]

1. If only the TPP was solely about this sort of thing.......

[elias49]

2. You have to be sh***** me.

Boo friggin hoo. Imagine? A nation trying to look out for its own.
Maybe we should try looking out for OUR own..you know..the 99%

[djean111]

3. Yeah, that, too.

It is weird to see people amazed that any country in the world is not doing things in America's best interests.
That being said, looks to me like corporations and banks are doing their damnedest to make themselves more sovereign than actual countries, as Investor States.

[pampango]

6. I think the idea is that if a country signs an international agreement, it is expected to live up

to it or withdraw from it; not to pick and choose where and when it will abide by the agreement.

If China wanted to have the complete freedom to "look out for its own" it should not sign agreements that bind them to act in certain ways. The same is true of any country and any agreement.

That may be the reason that republican state party platforms have called for the US to withdraw from the UN, the WTO, the IMF and essentially all international organizations. Membership in them requires to your country to do and to avoid doing certain things, thus curtailing your 'national sovereignty' which they seem to treasure over international cooperation.

[One_Life_To_Give]

4. Fair Competition?

In a place that routinely pays half it's workers under the table? Where rules are normally only enforced against foreign owned facilities.

[RDANGELO]

5. He needs to just raise some tariffs.

He can't because the constitution gives that power to congress. There was a vote some time ago to give him this ability , but it failed. the Republicans said that they couldn't trust him with it. I don't know what they thought he was going to do. I think It was really because of Obama derangement. The supposed liberal media never mentions this.