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2 China, US in search of a level
playing field By Benjamin A
Shobert
Since the US administration of
president Bill Clinton, the Democratic and
Republican parties have not taken up appreciably
distinguishable positions on the larger set of
policies concerning globalization or the smaller
subset of these issues related to China.
With few exceptions, both sides of the
political aisle have generally assumed that
lowering barriers to trade would directly
benefit US business and
consumers, while at the same time indirectly
advancing Americans' collective interests in
seeing the free market lead toward open societies
governed by the rule of law.
But as
globalization has matured, some are beginning to
question whether the premise that free trade
equals freedom is accurate and, even if it is,
what forms of accountability should be in place to
ensure that countries like China are forced to
gravitate to the norms to which other countries
are held.
The questions circling around
China's accountability to international standards
have gradually become increasingly specific and
built momentum as a number of congressional panels
have publicly begun to question Beijing's
commitment to conformance with World Trade
Organization (WTO) standards.
With the
introduction of a Democrat-controlled Congress,
legislation like the recently reintroduced Fair
Currency Act (FCA) of 2007 attest to a subtly
changing position on the broad topic of
globalization, and the more specific set of
assertions that have supported China's entry to
the marketplace for the past 15-plus years.
In the recent past, China has received
shelter from those who understandably want to see
the country evolve into one roughly paralleling
Western democracies and believe that trade is the
best way of accomplishing their goal of political
reform. This is certainly an admirable and noble
goal, but as the full impact of a modernizing
China is felt by those who have lost jobs or must
now compete with what seem to be artificially low
prices, Washington is under pressure to ensure as
level a playing field as possible exists between
the two countries.
Reports like last
week's from the Economic Policy Institute in
Washington assert that the US has lost 1.8 million
jobs from 2001-06 because of the trade deficits
with China. The report states, "Nearly
three-quarters of the jobs displaced were in
manufacturing industries. Simply put, the promised
benefits of trade liberalization with China have
been unfulfilled."
It becomes increasingly
difficult for Congress members from those
districts most impacted by trade with China to
justify halting compliance from Beijing on matters
regarding currency manipulation and conformity to
WTO standards when job losses continue to mount in
their states.
Heading into the 2008 US
election cycle, both parties realize that when the
dust settles over the war in Iraq, they are going
to be held accountable by their voters for
inactivity on matters related to job growth and,
in particular, policies that did not enforce rules
designed to ensure fair trade between China and
the United States. While previously it might have
been easy to pass off concerns over China's trade
policies as being of interest only to those
reliant on organized labor for their votes, the
FCA currently enjoys broad bipartisan support.
Introduced in the House of Representatives
by Democratic Tim Ryan and Republican Duncan
Hunter and in the Senate by Republican Jim Bunning
and Democrat Debbie Stabenow, the FCA, coupled
with the public support from both traditional
sources such as the American Federation of Labor
and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)
and less traditional avenues such as the Society
of the Plastics Industry or the US Business
Industry Council, suggests that Beijing should
anticipate an increasingly strident environment in
Washington for trade-related matters.
The
reintroduction of the 2005 bill is, in 2007,
meeting a legislative body more likely to pass the
FCA. A spokesman for Congressman Ryan contacted
for this article stated, "This type of
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