Editorials

Remove trade irritants

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-27 07:49

The US side should make earnest efforts to speedily acknowledge China as a market economy; only then will bilateral trade become an important growth engine for their economies.

It is but natural that China and the United States should encounter several frictions in bilateral trade, with both being the second-largest trade partner of each other.

Yet, by denying China's market economy status for too long, the US government has not only unnecessarily intensified and complicated some trade disputes, but also somewhat undermined its own ambition to double exports in five years.

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It is a pity that the two powers could not come to an agreement on the issue of China's market economy status during the second round of the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue that concluded in Beijing Tuesday.

The US side should make earnest efforts to speedily acknowledge China as a market economy; only then will bilateral trade become an important growth engine for their economies.

Within a span of three decades, Sino-US trade has multiplied 120 times to touch $298 billion in 2009. Unfortunately, along with its rapid rise as the world's largest exporter, China has also become the world's largest anti-dumping target - largely because it has been labeled a "non-market economy."

When China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), all the WTO members agreed to accept China's market economy status no later than 2010. Although more than two thirds of those nations have granted this status, major developed economies like the United States still refuse to do so out of domestic concerns.

Such discriminatory use of the market economy criteria has put Chinese exporters at a disadvantage during anti-dumping litigations by local competitors.

The worst global recession in decades has alerted the international community to the dire consequences of trade protectionism, especially in the form of anti-dumping cases.

Moreover, the US' urgent need to revive and rebalance its economic growth by expanding exports has also added to the importance of a better trade environment.

The two countries' vast market potential alone will be worth any effort that facilitates growth in bilateral trade.

(China Daily 05/27/2010 page8)