China trade body vows legal action over ‘unreasonable’ US Section 301 probe into Chinese shipbuilders, maritime firms
- The US trade office has launched a probe into the Chinese maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors over ‘unfair trade practices’
- China’s trade promotion body CCPIT calls move ‘discriminatory’, blames ‘lack of competitiveness’ for US shipping industry downturn
The China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) will “arrange for companies from the upstream and downstream supply chains to attend the hearings in the US in order to legally defend the rights of Chinese companies,” a spokesman said.
Section 301 investigations aim to determine whether a foreign government’s policies or acts are discriminatory, and whether they burden or restrict US commerce.
A White House fact sheet on the launch of the investigations last week cited “growing concerns that unfair Chinese trade practices, including flooding the market with below-market-cost steel, [were] distorting the global shipbuilding market and eroding competition”.
The downturn in the US shipping industry was due to its own “lack of competitiveness” and had nothing to do with China, the CCPIT spokesman said.
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The first such call from the Biden administration targets alleged subsidies from the Chinese government in the sectors concerned, which are already under Trump-era duties.
The Chinese commerce ministry said it was “strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed” the US move. It also called the accusations “false” and “entirely untenable”, but has not announced any retaliatory action.
The CCPIT, a body under China’s cabinet, the State Council, has yet to specify what kind of legal action it plans to take, but has submitted legal defence documents in US trade investigation hearings against Chinese goods in the past.
If the investigation determines foreign practices have unfairly affected US commerce, the USTR may take “appropriate and feasible action”, including imposing duties and other import restrictions such as fees, a White House statement said.
The USTR was seeking public comments and would hold a public hearing in this connection, the statement said.
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai has said that a tariff review on more than US$300 billion in Chinese imports inherited from the Trump administration will conclude “soon”.
Biden had kept the tariffs in place and been looking at ways to make them more strategic and effective, Tai told Bloomberg in an interview published on Friday.
Biden’s call on raising tariffs on steel came just ahead of his visit to the – United Steelworkers Union headquarters in Pittsburgh, as part of his re-election campaign in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
Chinese companies are “not competing. They’re cheating … And we’ve seen the damage here in America”, Biden told a crowd of cheering steelworkers. He also pledged to never allow a repeat of the thousands of job losses in the sector between 2000 and 2010, when “Chinese steel began flooding the market”.
