Report: China world’s worst on policies that hurt US economy, workers

China tops a list of more than four dozen nations that do the most damage to U.S. workers and the economy, a new survey showed Wednesday.

India, Argentina, Brazil and Russia round out the top five nations that maintain economic policies that damage U.S. interests, according to a new Global Mercantilist Index (GMI) from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

{mosads}“The growth of trade mercantilism represents a major threat to the integrity of the global trading system and demands a coherent and bold response,” said Michelle Wein, trade policy analyst with ITIF and co-author of the index.

ITIF created the model and ranked 55 nations in 16 categories to better assess which ones are hurting the United States the most.

The index looked at practices, such as forced technology transfer, currency manipulation, market access and intellectual property protection to determine where the nations stood.

“Through this report we hope to better illustrate the extent of the problem and offer a new policy framework that can promote a robust global innovation ecosystem moving forward,” Wein said. 

The index also proposes new policy tools to better create a global trading regime based on rules- and market-based trade.