China refutes US quota claims
MOFCOM says nation abides by WTO rules
China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said on Friday that China has always respected the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and has always insisted on managing trade in agricultural products with a method that conforms to those rules.
The MOFCOM’s statement was released one day after the US government filed a case against China before the WTO on charges that China’s use of tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) for rice, wheat and corn breached its WTO commitments and hurt US farm exports.
According to a Reuters report on Thursday, the US government complained that China didn’t maximize its use of TRQs for the three commodities which could limit opportunities for US farmers to export grains to the Chinese market.
China would have imported up to $3.5 billion more of the crops in 2015 if the quotas had been fully used, Reuters cited the Office of the US Trade Representative as saying.
The MOFCOM responded by saying that the TRQs on the three commodities have been in line with relevant WTO regulations.
Liu Jianying, an associate research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times on Friday that the complaints were groundless because when China entered the WTO, it made clear that it would use the current TRQ system for a number of products including rice, wheat and corn, and the WTO was aware of that and permitted China to do so.
The US government’s complaint was the second challenge to China’s agricultural policies by the US Trade Representative since September. It was also the 15th trade enforcement challenge launched by the Obama administration at the WTO against China since 2009, Reuters reported.
Liu said that the conflicts wouldn’t change the fact that the common ground between the US and China far exceeds their differences.
“It’s a trend that the trade between the US and China will be accompanied by frictions. Cooperation and complementarity will be the main stream of the Sino-US trade relations, while conflicts will be the tributary,” she said.
But she noted that it was difficult to predict the US economic policy in 2017, when Donald Trump starts his term of office. “If he adopts an antiglobalization stance, it would harm not only the global economy, but also the US economy,” Liu noted.