Stronger U.S. action needed on China trade: panel (Reuters)

[OhioChick]

Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:02am ET
By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States needs to take stronger action to ensure China lives up to its trade obligations, the leaders of a U.S. commission that advises Congress told reporters.

"Let's face it, at a certain point, you need action," said Larry Wortzel, chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which was set up by Congress five years ago and has a hard-line reputation.

China's failure to stop piracy and counterfeiting of U.S. goods and its manipulation of its currency are two examples of how it is shirking the rules it agreed to follow when it joined the World Trade Organization five years ago, Wortzel said on Wednesday during a briefing on the panel's annual report, which was formally released on Thursday.

"It makes agreements after very difficult negotiations, then it ignores them and goes off and does exactly what it wishes to do," Wortzel said.

The United States is partly to blame because it has been far too tolerant of China's failure to play by the rules, Commission Vice Chairman Carolyn Bartholomew said.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-11-16T110235Z_01_N15473694_RTRUKOC_0_US-TRADE-CHINA-USA.xml&WTmodLoc=PolNewsHome_C2_politicsNews-1

[brentspeak]

1. The advocates of cheap labor will just call it "protectionism"

Anti-Americans, all of them.

[xchrom]

2. it will be hard for anyone to focus on issues like trade, labour,

wage equity as long as we're taking an ass whooping in iraq and drowning in subsequent debt.