US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez yesterday warned China that its failure to keep market opening promises is fueling US protectionist sentiment despite a delay in a vote on proposed sanctions against Chinese imports.
The warning comes ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao's (胡錦濤) trip to Washington next month.
Gutierrez, in a speech to US businesspeople, appealed to Chinese leaders to help fight efforts to restrict trade, saying Beijing must do more to open its markets and stop rampant product piracy.
PHOTO: EPA
"There is a real protectionist and isolationist sentiment creeping up, emerging in our country. That is not good" for trade relations, he said.
Gutierrez met this week with Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), China's top economic official, Commerce Minister Bo Xilai (薄熙來), and others.
He wouldn't give details of their talks but said earlier he would bring up market access, product piracy and complaints about China's exchange-rate controls.
On Tuesday in Washington, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, and Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, proposed a law pushing the Bush administration to act more aggressively on China's currency policy.
Washington and Beijing have jousted for months over China's reluctance to let the yuan trade freely in financial markets, which many in Congress say keeps its exports artificially cheap.
On Tuesday two other US senators -- New York Democrat Charles Schumer and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham -- said they would defer a vote on their separate bill threatening a 27.5 percent duty on Chinese imports. They said their recent trip to China had left them more encouraged that Beijing would reform its currency rules.
Gutierrez said he was unfamiliar with the Grassley-Baucus bill but repeatedly warned against rising protectionist rancor aimed at China, while urging Beijing to address US complaints.
"All that we have done together can be put at risk by rising the level of trade tension in the US government," Gutierrez told US business executives in Beijing.
Gutierrez declined to comment on whether Washington would back EU moves to complain to the WTO about Chinese policies on auto component imports.
But he said Chinese efforts to subsidize local industries, promote home-grown security standards for wireless computer networks, and restrict multinationals' access to government purchasing programs were straining trade ties.
"Our companies still don't have the access that they were promised under the terms of China's WTO entry," he told a gathering of US business executives yesterday, referring to Beijing's joining the WTO in 2001.
"The bottom line is that our companies still don't have the access they were promised," he said.
But during Gutierrez's visit, senior Chinese officials rejected the main US complaint that China's currency and trade policies had created the two countries' trade gap.
Bo told Gutierrez on Tuesday that China was not to blame for the gap, which he said was the outcome of broader global economic shifts, according to a report on his ministry's Web site.
"A considerable amount of Chinese exports to the United States comes from US companies who have invested in China," Bo told him.
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