This Reuters archive report said the Trump administration had concluded that China still had not changed the trade and technology practices Washington viewed as central to the U.S.-China dispute.
The update came from the U.S. Trade Representative’s Section 301 investigation into China’s intellectual property and technology transfer policies. That probe had already triggered tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, later expanded to $250 billion.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the review was part of the administration’s stronger monitoring and enforcement effort. He said: “This update shows that China has not fundamentally altered its unfair, unreasonable, and market-distorting practices that were the subject of the March 2018 report on our Section 301 investigation.”
USTR said China had not responded constructively to the initial Section 301 reports and had taken no substantive steps to address U.S. concerns. The agency also said Beijing had made clear it would not change its policies because of the investigation.
The report said China continued to support cyber-enabled theft of U.S. intellectual property and maintained discriminatory technology licensing restrictions. It also said that even after some foreign ownership limits were relaxed, the Chinese government still used investment restrictions to pressure technology transfers from U.S. companies to Chinese entities.
The findings landed as Washington and Beijing were trying to find ways out of the trade war and finalise details for a Trump-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the G20 leaders summit in Buenos Aires at the end of November.
Tensions were also rising in public. A senior Chinese diplomat said on Tuesday that the failure of G20 officials to agree on a summit communique was due to some countries “excusing” protectionism, a clear swipe at U.S. tariffs.
On Saturday, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said the United States would not retreat from the dispute and could even double tariffs unless Beijing accepted Washington’s demands.
The source image caption identified a Chinese national flag at a port in Beihai, Guangxi province, China, and said the picture was taken on 17 June 2017.
