Trump threatens trade war measures against China
By
Peter Symonds
4 August 2017
Amid bitter accusations that China has failed to rein in North Korea, the US administration is undertaking a review of trade policy and threatening to initiate trade war measures against Beijing over alleged theft of intellectual property rights.
News of the White House trade review was leaked to the media following President Donald Trump’s tweets on the weekend, in which he declared he was “very disappointed in China” over the latest North Korean long-range missile launch last Friday.
Trump explicitly linked the missile test with trade, tweeting: “Our foolish past leaders have allowed them [China] to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk.”
The US president warned: “We will no longer allow this to continue.”
During last year’s presidential election campaign, Trump repeatedly lambasted China over trade, threatening to name it as a currency manipulator and impose tariffs of up to 45 percent on Chinese goods.
After a much-heralded meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in April, Trump toned down his threats in the expectation of bilateral trade talks and tough Chinese measures to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Negotiations on July 19 over a series of trade deals abruptly broke up without any news conference.
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times both reported this week that the Trump administration is considering initiating a formal investigation into whether Chinese intellectual property policies constitute “unfair trade practices” under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. A probe by US trade representative Robert Lighthizer would lay the basis for punitive…