Business groups and Democrats are pressuring the Trump administration to insist on certain concessions from China in the ongoing trade negotiations, chief among them curbing China’s forced technology transfers.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Banking Committee Ranking Member Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, urged the administration Friday to focus on technology and intellectual property. The senators wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that they were concerned that the administration may settle for a deal that merely addresses trade imbalances, rather than preventing Chinese theft of U.S. technology.
“China must stop its abusive practice of technology transfers; It must stop trade and economic espionage that pilfers our intellectual property and know-how; and U.S. companies must be permitted to freely compete in China’s markets,” the senators wrote.
Business groups have echoed that point. “We have a long way to go. There are major gaps in structural areas,” Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Myron Brilliant, who was briefed on this week’s U.S.-China talks by the White House, told Fox. “We still have no real work being done in dealing with forced technology transfers, in dealing with a range of industrial policies.”
“What we’re really seeing right now is a focus around piracy and criminalization of certain IP activity. We’re not even really seeing clarity around trade secrets,” Brilliant told Reuters Thursday.
Naomi Wilson, senior director of policy for Asia at the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group representing companies such as Apple and Dell, urged the administration to consider postponing the March 1 deadline “to allow talks to continue without increasing tariffs if more time is needed.”
“Any long-term solution must address China’s problematic trade policies and practices, open market access to non-Chinese companies, roll back tariffs, and have a clear plan to implement these changes and hold China accountable,” Wilson said.
The White House has set March 1 as the deadline for China to make concessions before it raises tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25 percent, up from their current level of 10 percent.
The Trump administration has often cited intellectual property and technology transfers as major infractions by China, alleging that it coerces U.S. companies into turning over their technology in order to access Chinese markets.
In late November, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer released a report saying nothing had changed, despite recent talks. “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,” he said.
On Thursday, though, following a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, President Trump said he had discussed the issue but downplayed the possibility of reaching a deal on it by next month.
“Technology transfer, IT — I think that we have made tremendous progress,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you’re going to have a deal, but I can say that there is a tremendous relationship and warm feeling, and we’ve made tremendous progress.”
At the same event, Lighthizer said they had “focused on the most important issues, which are the structural issues and the protection of U.S. intellectual property, stopping forced technology transfer [and] intellectual property protection,” but also hedged on whether a deal could be reached.
“At this point, it’s impossible for me to predict success, but we are in a place that, if things work, it could happen,” Lighthizer said.
