A US trade bill targeting Chinese imports goes against international rules and Beijing will not adjust the value of its currency to try to bridge a trade deficit that is Washington’s problem to fix, China’s commerce minister said yesterday.
US President Barack Obama is set to sign the bill into law to allow duties to be imposed on subsidized goods from China and Vietnam, which the White House says will protect US jobs.
“We follow the rules of the WTO, but we have no obligation to follow domestic laws or regulations in any specific country that go beyond international rules,” Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming (陳德銘) told a news conference on the sidelines of an annual meeting of the National People’s Congress.
He said China had done a better job of bringing balance to global trade than the US, bringing its trade surplus down to 2.1 percent of economic output last year, while the trade deficit of the US was 4.8 percent of its GDP.
Chen said it was clear that the US had a responsibility to close its own deficit.
“Why did the US have a US$700 billion overall trade deficit? Why did China have an overall trade surplus of only US$150 billion, but a trade surplus of US$200 billion with the United States?” Chen responded rhetorically to a journalist’s question.
“Every man, free from prejudice and armed with common sense economics can come to the right conclusion,” Chen said.
Chen’s comments come a day after the US Congress passed the bill that Obama is set to sign into law. A US court ruled in December last year that the US Department of Commerce did not have authority to impose countervailing — or anti-subsidy — duties on goods from “non-market economies.”
US imports from China were a record US$399.3 billion last year. Washington said the US deficit with China reached a record US$295 billion, but China’s data showed only a US$202 billion surplus. China says the difference is caused by US statistical methodology which includes part of Hong Kong’s trade data in the calculations.
China’s total trade surplus shrank 15 percent last year compared with 2010 to US$155 billion, largely as a result of stalling demand in its two biggest markets, with the EU hobbled by a debt crisis and US consumer spending below par.
Chen said exports increased by an estimated 7 percent in the first two months of this year from last year, while import growth was likely above 7 percent.
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