Bio: Sen D-ND

The Chinese don’t take us seriously on trade issues. And a big reason is that China believes that it faces zero risk of losing their normal trade relations status. Why do we keep tolerating this from a county with which we have a $232 billion annual deficit?

Our country has short-sightedly embraced the following bargain. We get all kinds of cheap products from China, produced and exported under unfair conditions and sold at big-box retailers like Wal-Mart. In exchange, we allow our manufacturing base to be decimated and we assume a growing debt with the Chinese.

The numbers tell the story. In 2000, when the United States granted permanent normal trade relations with China, our merchandise trade deficit with China stood at $83 billion. By the end of last year, that trade deficit had exploded to $233 billion. Today, for every six dollars of merchandise that we buy from China, the Chinese buy only one dollar of merchandise from us.

That is a staggering indictment of the one-way trade that we have with China, and reflects a wide range of problems. These include vast intellectual property theft and piracy, currency manipulation, unfair barriers against U.S. exports, and an unfair playing field in which U.S. jobs go to China because of sweatshop conditions there.

One could write at length about the currency manipulation that China is engaged in. Suffice it to say that after several years of raising this issue with the Chinese, the manipulation of the Chinese currency continues unabated.

One could write at length about the issue of intellectual property violations, which USTR has described as reaching “epidemic levels,” and costs our producers an estimated $200 billion a year.

One could describe countless other examples of ways in which China is not trading fairly. Everyone knows that China has not lived up to its promises when it obtained permanent normal trade relations.

This is what the USTR report on Chinese trade barriers had to say last year:

“. . . Agricultural trade with China remains among the least transparent and predictable of the world’s major markets. Capricious practices by Chinese customs and quarantine officials can delay or halt shipments of agricultural products into China, while sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards with questionable scientific bases and a generally opaque regulatory regime frequently bedevil traders in agricultural commodities.”

The Chinese don’t take us seriously on trade issues. And a big reason is that China believes that it faces zero risk of losing their normal trade relations status. Why do we keep tolerating this from a county with which we have a $232 billion annual deficit?

I agree with the sentiment that Senator Grassley echoed last year: ‘the Chinese have played us for suckers.’ And I think that we need to rescind permanent normal trade relations, and send a message to the Chinese that will be heard loud and clear.

The above is excerpted from an article Senator Byron L. Dorgan wrote for EconomyInCrisis.org. Byron L. Dorgan has served in the US Congress since 1981 has been a leading voice for change in America’s trade policies. His 2006 book, “Take This Job and Ship it: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America” exposed how America’s trading practices abroad are hurting US workers domestically.

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