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U.S.-China Trade: Opportunities to Improve U.S. Government Efforts to Ensure Open and Fair Markets

GAO-05-554T Published: Apr 14, 2005. Publicly Released: Apr 14, 2005.
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Highlights

Today's hearing takes place not only at a time of increasing trade between the United States and China but also amidst a period of ongoing concern about the growing U.S. trade deficit with China, which totaled $162 billion in 2004. Managing this relationship with one of the United States' most important trading partners is an effort that calls upon the resources of nearly every aspect of the U.S. trade policy apparatus. Our ongoing body of work has examined several aspects of this apparatus, including U.S. government efforts to ensure China's compliance with complex and far-reaching World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments, as well as the federal government's application of available trade remedies against China. As part of that work that has been issued to date, we have recently put forth a number of recommendations to the key executive branch agencies about how to improve the U.S. government's efforts in these areas. To provide Congress with an update on these issues, this statement discusses (1) the key findings and recommendations from our recently issued work on U.S. government efforts to ensure China's compliance with WTO commitments, as well as U.S. efforts to protect U.S. intellectual property rights overseas and (2) issues related to how the United States has applied a key trade remedy--the China textile safeguard. These observations are based on a series of reports initiated at the bipartisan request of various congressional committees. That work has included an analysis of China's commitments, surveys and interviews with private sector representatives, the results of two annual assessments of the U.S. government's compliance efforts, a review of overseas intellectual property rights protection, and, most recently, a review of the China textile safeguard.

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Foreign trade policiesInteragency relationsInternational agreementsPerformance managementInternational economic relationsInternational lawInternational organizationsInternational tradeInternational trade regulationInternational trade restrictionTrade policiesTextile industry