Posted on 03/16/2004 8:34:13 AM PST by Walkin Man
Unions Press for Sanctions Against China
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON - Organized labor asked the Bush administration on Tuesday to impose economic sanctions on China because of the country's alleged violations of worker rights.
The request — in a petition filed with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick — represented the latest effort by American unions to highlight what they see as unfair trade practices that have led to a record $124 billion U.S. trade deficit with China last year and the loss of thousands of U.S. factory jobs.
The petition, filed by the AFL-CIO on behalf of its 13 million members, alleged that China was brutally repressing worker rights and this constituted an unfair labor practice as defined in Section 301 of Trade Act of 1974.
It marked the first time that Section 301 has been used to challenge another country's worker rights practices.
Before the creation of the World Trade Organization (news - web sites) in 1995, U.S. corporations often petitioned the government to bring Section 301 unfair trade cases against other countries to challenge such things as their violations of U.S. copyrights and patents.
The government could then impose economic sanctions on countries in various areas if the administration determined that unfair trade practices were occurring. But since the creation of the WTO, the United States normally goes to the organization if it wants to pursue an unfair trade case.
Only after winning the case before the WTO could the United States impose trade sanctions.
However, AFL-CIO lawyers argue in their petition that in the area of violations of worker rights, the United States still can pursue unfair trade investigations on its own and impose sanctions without getting approval from the WTO.
The administration will have 45 days to determine whether to accept the AFL-CIO petition and launch an investigation into China's labor practices.
The AFL-CIO does not specify what sanctions it would like to see imposed. But Mark Barenberg, a law professor at Columbia University who worked on the case for the AFL-CIO, said that one way to deal with violations would be to impose penalty tariffs on Chinese products and gradually remove them if China meets certain benchmarks for improving labor rights.
Barenberg said the labor federation believed China was gaining a cost advantage through the labor rights violations of between 10 percent and 77 percent.
The labor group said that many of the labor violations occurred when people traveled from rural areas to take industrial jobs in Chinese factories where their activities are strictly regulated by a system of internal passport controls.
The petition contended that these young workers, mostly female, "often step into a nightmare of 18-hour work days with no day of rest, earning meager wages that are often withheld or unpaid altogether."
Outside trade experts saw the AFL-CIO filing as an effort to duplicate the success various U.S. industries such as steel and autos have had in the past of rolling out big trade cases during election years in hopes of highlighting their grievances against various foreign countries.
"This is an election-year gambit," said Gary Hufbauer, a trade expert at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank.
Last week, Zoellick told members of Congress that the administration was considering bringing its own trade case against China on a more narrow issue of the taxes that China levies on foreign-made semiconductors.
Zoellick told the Senate Finance Committee that China must honor the commitments it made to enter the WTO in 2001 by lowering its trade barriers "if support in the United States for an open market with China is to be sustained."
The administration has also been pressuring China to halt its practice of linking the value of its currency, the yuan, to the U.S. dollar. U.S. manufacturers say that this has allowed the yuan to be undervalued by as much as 40 percent against the dollar, giving Chinese goods a tremendous price advantage over American products.
Chinese officials, however, have resisted pressure by the administration to allow the yuan's value to be set by currency markets, saying that too much currency volatility could destabilize the country's fragile banking system.
I'm sure it won't take long.
Correction: the latest effort by American unions to create a political problem for George W. Bush.
Correction: George Bush and the GOP are the ones that created the problem and handed it to the Unions on a sliver platter.
The Unions, political allies of the Rat party are just highlighting it for unemployed / outsourced American voters.
The ball is in the GOP court...
Huh the unions were totally silent on Clinton selling military secrets to China.
Can anybody say political stunt.
Yeah its seems that your heroes, the unions, were silently complicit when the Clintons sold military secrets to the Chinese.
"But since the creation of the WTO, the United States normally goes to the organization if it wants to pursue an unfair trade case. "
How can any sane patriot think this sentence is something the Founders would be proud of? I have my lighter ready to burn my globalist citizen ID card when it's issued. How many free traitors at FR are ready to do the same?
If nation A has free trade with anyone, EXCEPT that it will impose on nation B1,2,3... the same tariffs/excises/restrictions, etc. that nation B1,2,3... imposes on nation A, is that a violation of free trade that will economically injure nation A?
They sold their working class members out to the demoRat party long ago.
Just like free traitor Republicans sold out its middle class base to Red China and India.
Both parties are bought and paid for lackeys of US multi national corps.
Tell me oh wise one, how exactly can an American worker compete against communist slave labor?
I await your answer with great interest.
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