The EU’s ongoing countervailing duty probe into Chinese electric vehicles (see 2408200020) has brought the two sides’ industries to a “crossroads,” and Beijing will continue to lobby against the tariffs through negotiations “until the very end,” China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao said this week.
Exports to China
Sens. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Tim Kaine, D-Va., both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced a bill Sept. 19 that would authorize the president to sanction foreign adversary entities that provide support to China’s maritime militia.
The top lawmaker on the House Select Committee on China called on the U.S. to continue imposing strict export controls and investment restrictions against China, adding that those tools must be coupled with bolder investments in innovative American companies if the U.S. wants to “win” its technology competition with China.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Risch, R-Idaho, and 10 other Republican senators introduced a wide-ranging China bill Sept. 19 that contains several export control, sanction and foreign investment provisions, including “modifying the Missile Technology Control Regime” to increase cooperation under the Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) security partnership.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told a congressional panel Sept. 18 that he will look into the possibility of expanding the export control exemptions that the State Department intends to grant to Australia and the U.K. under the AUKUS security partnership.
China last week announced sanctions against nine American defense companies and their senior executives for arms sales to Taiwan. The measures, taken under China’s anti-foreign sanctions law (see 2309270039 and 2310230032), target Sierra Nevada, S3 Aerospace Defense, ACT1 Federal, Cubic Corp. and others, according to an unofficial translation of a Sept. 18 notice from the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The ministry said the sanctions freeze those companies’ assets in China, and Chinese companies will be barred from doing certain business with their executives.
House Select Committee on China Chairman Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., urged the Treasury Department this week to expand the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to include land purchases near Coast Guard facilities, Energy Department national laboratories, maritime ports and critical energy and telecommunications infrastructure.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen chose Maros Sefcovic as the bloc’s commissioner for trade and economic security, saying in a Sept. 17 mission letter that Sefcovic should help the EU take a “more assertive stance” on the use of sanctions and other economic statecraft tools, work to modernize the EU’s customs system, and push to finalize free trade deals.
The EU could soon see a sharp uptick in its use of defensive trade policy tools, especially if Donald Trump is elected the next U.S. president and follows through with his promise of a new global tariff (see 2409110015), at least one panelist said during a roundtable discussion on EU competitiveness.
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