Trump ‘challenging’ China’s industrial policies: Lighthizer

WASHINGTON, July 26, (RTRS): The top US trade negotiator said late on Tuesday that President Donald Trump is determined to challenge China’s use of unfair subsidies and “noneconomic” industrial policy to build up export industries that are costing American jobs.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, in a rare media interview, said that the Trump administration would work to hold China’s practices to the rules of the World Trade Organization, an organization that he has criticized for being ineffective in enforcing fair trade.

Speaking on the syndicated “Kevin McCullough Radio” conservative talk show, Lighthizer said there was “no question that China has an industrial policy that is designed to create jobs and wealth in China.”

“Our objective is not to let that go on in an unfair way.”

Lighthizer, a longtime steel industry trade lawyer who served as deputy USTR in the 1980s, said there were many examples of China’s WTO violations, including dumping of products below cost, unfair subsidies for state firms and other “non-economic” policies.

“You have to take on their industrial policy one way or another,” Lighthizer said. “For example, they will develop an industry behind a closed market in China. When that industry is developed with subsidies and with protection, they’ll then let it loose on the world.”

He said this has happened in steel, aluminum and other products.

“If it’s unfair the president’s going to go after it.”

Lighthizer’s comments come about a week after senior Trump administration officials at bilateral economic talks failed to secure any concrete commitments from their Chinese counterparts to eliminate excess steel production capacity or to further open the Chinese services industry to foreign competition.

News conferences at the conclusion of the US-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue talks were canceled and there was no joint statement for the first time since the summer bilateral economic meetings were launched in 2006.