16 August 2017

News Story: U.S. unilateral measures to shaken multilateral trade framework - UN official

GENEVA, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. unilateral punishing trade measures, based on outdated national laws, against its trade partners are not in line with the international laws and could shaken the foundation of an established multilateral trade framework, a UN trade official warned on Tuesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday directed the U.S. trade representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer to examine China's intellectual property practices, despite worries about potential harms to China-U.S. trade ties.

The USTR will determine "whether to investigate any of China's laws, policies, practices, or actions" that "may be harming American intellectual property rights, innovation or technology development" under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, according to a memorandum released by the White House.

Section 301, once heavily used in the 1980s and the early 1990s, allows the U.S. president to unilaterally impose tariffs or other trade restrictions against foreign countries, but the U.S. has rarely used the trade tool since the WTO came into being in 1995.

Liang Guoyong, Economic Affairs Officer at the Investment and Enterprise Division of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), said such an examination under Section 301 could serve as a tool for the U.S. to strike a bargain with China, and any tariffs or restricting trade measures thereof imposed unilaterally by the U.S. could shaken the foundation of a multilateral trade framework.

The repercussions would be a high risk of a trade war which will benefit neither of the two countries, he added.

Read the full story at Xinhua