US Confident Of Resolution In WTO Dispute With China

by Mary Swire, for LawAndTax-News.com, Hong Kong

01 April 2004

Speaking at a Tokyo press conference on Tuesday, US Commerce Department undersecretary for international trade, Grant Aldonas revealed that the US government is "optimistic" that the current dispute with China over the latter's lax compliance with World Trade Organisation rules on tax and IP protection can be resolved.

He announced that the Joint US-China Commission on Commerce and Trade will meet next month to address the trade issues in question, and explained that:

"If we fail in our efforts, that'll be the point when we'll have to sit down, not just with Japan, but many of our other trading partners, and talk seriously about how you grapple with an endemic problem in China (of poor Intellectual Property protection)."

The United States recently filed the first ever case against China before the WTO over the country's imposition of a higher tax on imported semiconductor chips, an issue which has also angered Japan.

In its newly released annual report on unfair trade practices, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry pointed to China as accounting for seven of the fifteen issues raised. According to the report, China "has many areas that need to be corrected, including the slowness of revising domestic laws and inconsistency and a lack of transparency in applying these laws".

It went on to list several key areas of concern, including the higher taxes levied on the importation of foreign semiconductors, the lax anti-piracy regime, the high number of anti-dumping investigations launched by China against Japan (eleven out of the fifteen brought by the country since its accession to the WTO), and the high tariffs imposed on imported photographic film.

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