Lawmakers have continued to press the Obama administration to get tougher on China’s undervalued currency, problems with intellectual property theft and indigenous innovation issues, among others, that they argue give China an unfair international trade advantage.
“China could be much more aggressive in combating piracy and theft, and those are some of the issue we most consistently raise with them,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing.
He said China tends to respond with promises of change for special events, especially meetings between high-ranking U.S. and Chinese officials.
“For six months they do really good then go back to doing what they were doing,” he said.
The bills introduced on Wednesday would restore Commerce’s ability to set tariffs on subsidized goods from nations without a domestic market, overturning a U.S. appeals court ruling in December.
House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), ranking member Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), subcommittee on Trade Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and ranking member Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) are leading the charge on the House side, while Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) introduced the companion legislation in the Senate.
“This legislation preserves our ability to fight unfair subsidies granted by countries like China that injure our industries, cost U.S. jobs and distort the market,” Camp said.
“This targeted legislation does so by reaffirming that our countervailing duty laws apply to unfairly subsidized imports from non-market economies like China,” he said.
Camp said he expected the legislation to move quickly through Congress to remedy the situation.
The bill has support from the White House, which has argued along with the lawmakers that the measure helps U.S. employers and workers who face unfairly subsidized imports from countries like China.
“This has been a major focus and priority for the Obama administration, which has been working closely with Congress to produce this legislation as quickly as possible,” Kirk said.
The legislation is supposed to bring the United States into compliance with its WTO obligations by addressing potential “double remedies” in situations where countervailing duties are applied to non-market economies exports at the same time that antidumping duties, calculated using the so-called “surrogate value” methodology, are applied to the exports.
In the Senate, the bill was co-sponsored by 10 additional senators: Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).