China's Compliance With WTO Commitments Is Poor, USTR Says
The U.S. Trade Representative's annual report on China's compliance with World Trade Organization commitments details many of the same problems noted in previous years' reports, but they wrote that this year “we focus on the positive outcomes to date of the Administration’s new and more effective strategy for engaging China, which has led to the signing of an historic trade agreement with China,” while also talking about “the important issues that remain to be addressed in our trade relationship with China.”
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Many of those issues are nearly word for word the same from last year's report (see 1902050024), such as “evasion services” offered to exporters who wish to avoid antidumping and countervailing duties. “Efforts to evade the application of antidumping duties and countervailing duties undermine the effectiveness of the WTO Antidumping Agreement and Subsidies Agreement and, more generally, erode confidence in the international trading system,” the report said.
New to this year's report was a mention of the problem of forced labor by Uighur Muslims held in re-education camps. “The Chinese government has refused to allow unrestricted inspection of these camps and prison sites and has been otherwise uncooperative regarding requests for information. It has therefore not been possible to confirm or dispute the validity of the allegations of pervasive forced labor and prison labor conditions or the extent to which the products of those conditions enter into the supply chains of goods bound for the United States,” the report said.