Bush Admin Cites 55 Countries For Erecting Trade Barriers
The Bush administration cited 55 countries Thursday, from Angola to Vietnam, in its annual review of nations that have the worst trade barriers faced by U.S. exporters.
The report, which also named three trading groups, is intended to guide the administration negotiating strategy in the coming year in attacking barriers that are causing the greatest harm to U.S. companies.
If direct talks with a country don't produce results, then the administration can bring a case against the country before international regulators with the World Trade Organization .
A group of House Democrats on Thursday sent a letter to President George W. Bush, urging the administration to begin negotiations with five key trading partners - China, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and India - over such issues such as Japanese and South Korean barriers to U.S. cars and auto parts and European subsidies to airplane-maker Airbus (ABI.YY).
The Democrats complained that the Bush administration has failed to aggressively pursue unfair trade cases with other countries, averaging just three per year in its first three years in office, compared to an average of 10 WTO cases filed annually by the Clinton administration.
The letter was signed by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and a number of Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee, the panel that handles trade issues.
The group asked the administration to file WTO cases against the four individual countries and the E.U. if negotiations to remove the barriers don't produce results in the next two months.
The Democrats also said they were introducing legislation to put back into effect a portion of U.S. trade law known as "Super 301" which would set deadlines for the administration to bring WTO cases against the worst trade barriers identified by the annual report, formally known as the "National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers."
In response to the request for trade cases to be launched against specific countries, Bush officials said the administration didn't shy away from filing WTO cases but only did so after efforts at country-to-country agreements failed.
"We are focused on getting results. There are different tools we use to get results," said John Vernoneau, general counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Richard Mills, a spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, said that the administration resolved through negotiations a dispute over non-tariff barriers by India to keep out U.S. textiles.
"We prefer to solve problems rather than file lawsuits," Mills said.
In addition to the auto barriers in Japan and South Korea, the E.U. subsidies to Airbus and the Indian textile issue, the Democrats urged that cases be filed involving lack of intellectual property protection by India and various areas where the group contended that China isn't living up to the commitments it made to tear down barriers when it joined the WTO.
The U.S. is running record trade deficits with the biggest imbalance last year recorded with China, a trade gap of $124 billion. That's the largest deficit ever recorded with a single country.
The trade barriers report devotes 39 pages to a discussion of trade barriers erected by China, including a review of the administration's efforts to get China to stop linking its currency to the dollar, a practice that U.S. manufacturers contend undervalues the Chinese currency by as much as 40%, giving products from that country a huge competitive advantage against U.S. goods.
Japan, which until recently was the country with the largest trade surplus with the U.S., came in for 34 pages of discussion in the new report, the same number of pages devoted to discussing trade practices in the E.U. that the U.S. found objectionable.
Countries cited in the report were: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam and the trading groups of the European Union, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
布什政府将55个国家列入贸易"黑名单"
布什政府周四在年度审查报告中列举了，目前对美国出口商设置了最为严重的贸易壁垒的55个国家。
布什政府的这项报告试图指导未来几年政府的贸易谈判策略，以抗击对美国公司危害最为严重的贸易壁垒。报告还任命了3个贸易团体。
如果美国与其他国家展开的直接谈判以失败告终，那么美国政府会向世界贸易组织(World Trade Organization, 简称：WTO)国际监管部门对该国提起控诉。
美国国会民主党众议院某团体周四致信总统布什，敦促布什政府与中国、欧盟、日本、韩国和印度五大贸易合作伙伴展开谈判，以解决美国汽车及其部件在日本和韩国遭遇贸易壁垒等贸易问题。
美国民主党派抱怨布什政府未能对美国与其他国家发生的不合理贸易案件采取积极措施。在布什政府任职前3年中，平均每年仅向世贸组织提交3份申诉书，而当年克林顿政府每年向世贸组织提交申诉书的数量平均为10份。
该集团还要求，如果有关拆除贸易壁垒的谈判在未来两个月中仍无定论，布什政府应该将这4个国家和欧盟告上世贸组织。
作为回应，布什政府表示，他们在向世贸组织进行申诉问题上并未采取回避态度，只是在国与国之间协商失败后才会采取上述举措。
在这篇贸易壁垒报告中，有39页的内容谈及了中国贸易壁垒问题，其中包括美国政府努力敦促中国停止实施人民币联系美元汇率政策的评论。美国制造商认为，此项政策将人民币低估了40%之多，这使中国产品在与美国产品竞争中享有巨大优势。
报告中列出的国家包括：安哥拉、阿根廷、澳大利亚、玻利维亚、巴西、保加利亚、喀麦隆、加拿大、智利、中国、哥伦比亚、哥斯达黎加、象牙海岸、多米尼加共和国、厄瓜多尔、埃及、萨尔瓦多、加纳、危地马拉、洪都拉斯、香港、匈牙利、印度、印度尼西亚、以色列、日本、哈萨克斯坦、肯尼亚、韩国、马来西亚、墨西哥、摩洛哥、新西兰、尼加拉瓜、尼日利亚、挪威、巴基斯坦、巴拿马、巴拉圭、秘鲁、菲律宾、波兰、罗马尼亚、俄罗斯、新加坡、南非、斯里兰卡、瑞士、台湾、泰国、土耳其、乌克兰、乌兹别克斯坦、委内瑞拉、越南、欧盟各贸易团体、阿拉伯联盟(Arab League)和海湾合作理事会(Gulf Cooperation Council)。
