China Pushes Its Luck

For once the Bush Administration has sent a clear signal that it’s taking a tougher stance with China. Despite objections from the State Department, the President approved an investigation into restrictive trade practices, which could result in sanctions against Beijing.

The President took the action after Chinese officials delivered what U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills termed an “unsatisfactory” reply to an American request for changes in barriers against U.S. imports. U.S. and Chinese talks on the issue deadlocked in August. The Chinese had until Sept. 30 to propose remedial action, but instead they only suggested that they might eventually change their policies.

That response was too vague and noncommittal, especially because the U.S. trade deficit with China is expected to rise to $12 billion this year, up from $10.4 billion in 1990.

The Administration needed to get tough and override the State Department’s concerns that trade sanctions would set back relations between Washington and Beijing. The Administration has been roundly criticized for routinely renewing China’s most-favored-nation trading status despite Beijing’s checkered human rights record--including using prison labor to produce export products--since the Tian An Men Square massacre.

Withholding MFN status would have been detrimental to U.S.-China relations because it would have undermined an economic lifeline for the Chinese people. But Beijing’s intransigence on fair trade is an unconscionable abuse of Washington’s cooperative efforts. China must be willing to compromise.