Defying long odds and opposition from China, the US business community and the White House, the US Senate was determined to press ahead yesterday with a measure to punish Beijing for its alleged currency manipulation.
The bill, which calls for retaliatory tariffs on Chinese goods if the yuan is found to be unfairly “misaligned,” faced a critical procedural vote set for 10:30am in which it needed support from 60 senators to survive.
However, even then it would need a final ballot in the Democratic-led Senate — and would face an uphill fight in the Republican-held House of Representatives, where Speaker John Boehner has signaled the “dangerous” legislation will die.
Aides say it could return to life if China’s currency somehow became a core dispute as US President Barack Obama faces off with his as-yet undetermined Republican foe ahead of next year’s elections.
That contest is sure to turn on deep voter anger at the sour economy’s sluggish recovery from the global meltdown of 2007 and 2008, with stubbornly high unemployment of more than 9 percent a drag on Obama’s bid for a second term.
Known to oppose the bill in private, the White House on Wednesday said it was lobbying Congress to address “concerns” that the legislation could violate US obligations under international trade rules.
However, spokesman Jay Carney said that the White House shared the view that China’s currency needed to appreciate to what Washington says is a fairer value and agreed US workers needed a “level playing field.”
Few in Washington challenge the charge that China keeps the yuan unfairly low against the dollar, giving its goods as much as a 30 percent edge over comparable US products, widening the US trade deficit and costing US jobs, but the measure’s opponents say it risks sparking a trade war with China, and say a rise in the yuan will boost manufacturing and therefore jobs in countries like Vietnam or Malaysia — not in the US.
The People’s Daily slammed US lawmakers on Wednesday for touting the bill as a cure-all for economic troubles they have failed to address.
“Faced with the discontent of the American people, some US lawmakers are using the Chinese currency to pass the buck over their political incompetence,” the newspaper said, echoing angry denunciations from Chinese officials all week.
Those attacks drew a scathing response Wednesday from Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, the legislation’s top champion, who compared decision-makers in Beijing to a “pack of dogs” yelping in anger at the bill.
“Where I come from, they say when you throw a rock at a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one you hit,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Of course the Chinese are going to yelp because they don’t like this.”
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