中文请点击这里

We begin today one story in three parts, “Nothing Unites The United States Congress Like China (And Not In A Good Way): Treating China Like Canada (Maybe Even Worse)” by Dr. Elliot J. Feldman. Part One, “Rewriting Subsidies Law To Fit Chinese Facts,” examines the first legislation expressly for trade with China passed by the United States Congress and signed by the President since China’s accession to the WTO a decade ago. Over the years various bills have been introduced aimed at China, especially on currency valuation, but H.R. 4105, mandating the imposition of countervailing duties determined in investigations of subsidy allegations in non-market economies, is the first to win bipartisan and presidential support.

Part Two, which will appear next week, sharply criticizes this legislation because it breaks a promise to China concerning acceptance of the international rule of law and does not conform with WTO obligations. Dr. Feldman demonstrates that the passage of the new law, in deliberately overturning a judicial decision while failing to comply with a related WTO decision, suggests to China that it cannot rely on the rule of law to settle trade disputes with the United States.

Part Three, which will appear two weeks from now, explains that the American treatment of China with respect to the WTO and U.S. domestic law is reminiscent of the American treatment of Canada with reference to NAFTA, the WTO (the GATT at the time) and U.S. law. The United States, after losing trade disputes in the judicial process, changed the law. Dr. Feldman describes the impact of that conduct on trade relations with Canada and predicts that China will react differently and with much greater risk for the international trading system.

 Rewriting Subsidies Law To Fit Chinese Facts

The Congress of the United States has been gridlocked for years now by partisan bickering on almost every issue to come before it but one – China. And, in confronting China, the suddenly bipartisan Congress usually has presidential support. As Bill Reinsch, President of the National Foreign Trade Council, recently stated, “For the last 20 years, every presidential challenger has run against every incumbent by accusing him of being soft on China. Any intelligent, prepared administration will do its best to inoculate itself, and this administration has chosen to do that by launching much more aggressive enforcement [of trade actions against China].”

The Administration of Barack Obama and all the remaining Republican candidates for President agree that China trades unfairly in the international marketplace. In a stunning bipartisan display, it took Congress less than three months to become seized of a need for a legislative change and to complete the process. The process itself unfolded in less than a week, and it took only a few days for the President to sign into law the congressional action.

What Happened Before Congress Stepped In?
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, as previously reported on this blog, ruled on December 19, 2011 that U.S. law forbids the application of countervailing duties to non-market economies. GPX International Tire Corporation et. al. v. United States. On March 8, 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives completed the process of overturning the decision of the Court of Appeals, rewriting U.S. law.

From 1986 until November 2006, U.S. law on the subject of non-market economies had been governed by a Court of Appeals decision, Georgetown Steel Corp. v. United States, 801 F.2d 1308 (Fed. Cir.1986). By defining “subsidy” to be a financial contribution by a government that distorts a market, there could be no “subsidy” without a market and, as the Georgetown Steel court suggested, non-market economy governments “would in effect be subsidizing themselves.”

Democrats seized control of Congress in the November 2006 mid-term elections and the Department of Commerce, two weeks later, accepted a petition for countervailing duties on imports of coated free-sheet paper from China. It promptly became routine for petitioners to couple countervailing duty with antidumping petitions, and routine for the Department of Commerce to find both dumping and subsidies by applying, in both, non-market economy methodologies that repudiate domestic values in favor of surrogate prices from third countries.

The United States Court of International Trade (“CIT”) had struck down the subsidy finding of the Department of Commerce on GPX tires twice before, in 2009 and in October 2010, but on narrower grounds effectively affirmed by the World Trade Organization on a Chinese appeal in March 2011. These decisions did not conclude that the application of countervailing duties was forbidden by U.S. law, nor by WTO obligations, but that countervailing duty and antidumping cases potentially lead to a double-counting that unlawfully would exaggerate remedies. The CIT had ruled that the Department of Commerce could not pursue both simultaneously without a methodology to solve the double-counting problem.

The Court of Appeals in the GPX case skipped over the double-counting problem and went straight to the underlying premises of Georgetown Steel. The law, the Court of Appeals concluded, does not permit the assessment of countervailing duties against non-market economies.

Congress To The Rescue
The U.S. Congress in 2012 agrees on almost nothing except an antagonism toward China. Maps and globes still display China as a huge land mass, and most Americans believe that some 1.3 billion people are working there to produce goods that will overwhelm American manufacturing and put Americans out of work, all with the aggressive financial support of a centralized Communist Government.

This capitalist image is little changed from the American caricature of China since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. The traditional, sympathetic American view of China, captured best, perhaps, by Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, transformed with the Cold War. In both the Korean and Vietnamese Wars, Americans envisioned Chinese hordes pouring southward into narrow peninsulas, threatening the survival of nascent democracies. Now, Americans envision those same hordes, but hard at work in soulless factories, exploiting child labor, for the advancement of the Communist state against western capitalism.

Successive Presidents have strived to cure Americans of these distorted images, but every two years when it is time to elect a new Congress, the classic demagoguery of conjuring a common foe has fixed China as a popular target. The unanimous Court of Appeals decision from a three-judge panel chaired by the Chief Judge in December 2011 started a clock because, without a successful request for rehearing en banc or a successful writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court – both improbable – all of the pending and prior countervailing duty determinations against China would be stopped or reversed. Only Congress could prevent a chaotic turnabout, a role Congress (now Republican, confirming the bipartisan antipathy toward China) welcomed because of its popular resonance.

The House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee referred the corrective legislation to the full House on the same day it had been introduced to the Committee, February 29. Less than a week later, on March 6, the Committee’s Republican Chair moved to suspend the rules in order to expedite passage of the bill. All on that same day the House suspended the rules, debated the bill, proceeded through various rule technicalities and voted the bill itself 370-39. It went to the Senate the next day.

On March 7, the Senate read the bill twice, considered it, read it a third time, and passed it without amendment by Unanimous Consent. It was sent to the White House one day later, and was signed by the President on March 13. For anyone wondering how often bills go from committee introduction to presidential signature in a fortnight: not often, but not often is there legislation targeting China on which almost everyone agrees.

What The Legislation Does, And Does Not, Do
H.R. 4105 (112th Congress), “To apply the countervailing duty provisions of the Tariff Act of 1930 to nonmarket economy countries, and for other purposes,” statutorily directs the imposition of countervailing duties on merchandise imported from non-market economy countries with one exception, where “the economy of that country is essentially comprised of a single entity.” This language reflects continuity with one aspect of Georgetown Steel (the reference to subsidizing itself), but also supports the rationale offered by the Department of Commerce in 2007 for finding subsidies in China: there is enough of a market in China, according to the Department of Commerce, to find subsidies, but not enough to treat China as a market economy, nor to find any sector sufficiently market-based to be treated as “market oriented.” It is a position probably indefensible in logic or law prior to H.R. 4105, but now provided with some statutory support, albeit still indirect.

In response to an initial Republican resistance to the new legislation, voiced by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Michigan), the bill contains a second section, “Adjustment of Antidumping Duty In Certain Proceedings Relating To Imports From Nonmarket Economy Countries.” Camp was concerned that the legislation could violate WTO obligations enunciated in the March 2011 Appellate Body decision warning against double-counting. Officially, the Obama Administration has avoided public pronouncements as to whether the legislation accomplishes Camp’s goal. At the very end of his March 13, 2012 White House press briefing, Administration spokesman Jay Carney was asked:
“Also, the China commerce minister believes that the bill that President signed into law today should not only break the WTO rules but also sort of violate the U.S. domestic trade laws, which America — trade laws.”

Carney answered evasively:

“Well, I haven’t heard those comments. Obviously the President signed the bill because he thought it was — it merited signing. So I don’t have any comments with regards to that official’s statement.”

Privately, nonetheless, the White House appears convinced that this section of the bill assures that the legislation conforms with WTO obligations. Unfortunately, China’s Commerce Minister is right. The legislation does not comply with WTO obligations.

H.R. 4105 directs the Department of Commerce when finding both dumping and subsidies, to “reduce the antidumping duty by the amount of the increase in the weighted average dumping margin estimated by the administering authority [i.e., the Department of Commerce] . . .” This reduction depends, however upon the Department of Commerce’s ability to “reasonably estimate the extent to which the countervailable subsidy . . . in combination with the use of normal value [from the antidumping calculation] has increased the weighted average dumping margin for the class or kind of merchandise.” When it cannot make that estimate, it cannot make the adjustment, but by statute it must still assess countervailing duties. This statutory mandate is not materially different from the CIT conclusion that effectively halted countervailing duty cases against merchandise from China inasmuch as it instructs the Department of Commerce to do something it does not know how to do, but whereas the CIT concluded that the Department of Commerce consequently should not do it, the statute instructs that it must.

The CIT had ordered the Department of Commerce to figure out a solution to the double-counting problem before finding subsidies. The new legislation orders the Department to find subsidies and then figure out a solution. Under this instruction, the Department is no more likely to figure out a lawful solution than before, but now it will, under statutory direction, double-count. Companies in non-market economies will be required to contest the illegal double-counting on a case-by-case basis.

Finally, the new law contains an astonishing provision regarding its effective date because it “applies to . . . all proceedings initiated . . . on or after November 20, 2006.” The Department of Commerce thus is ordered by statute to revisit all countervailing duty petitions filed against China and Vietnam since November 20, 2006 and find subsidies without regard to double-counting and without regard to decisions of the CIT and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It then, to the extent it can figure out how, must try to adjust for double-counting. Petitioners are granted the benefit of a law that did not exist when they filed their petitions.

Belt And Suspenders: Request For Rehearing
The United States and its petitioning allies could avoid reversal of the final subsidies determination in GPX International Tire Corporation and other countervailing duty cases against China and Vietnam only by congressional act or by en banc appeal in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit by March 5. As quickly as Congress moved, the legislation was not in place on time.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the petitioners, including above all the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union of the AFL-CIO-CLC, filed separate petitions at the Court of Appeals for rehearing en banc on March 5.  Because the Court of Appeals decision is final (but subject to further appeal), H.R. 4105 could not overturn it as to the parties in the GPX case. Only the court can reverse the specific outcome. The legislation does reach twenty-four existing orders and six pending investigations, none of which went to final decision in the U.S. courts, but only the rehearing petitions can help the GPX petitioners.

Next Week: The Broken Promise to China 

今天开始，我们将分三期连续刊登费德门博士的评述《中国将美国国会团结在一起——中国惨遭加拿大待遇(甚至不及)》。第一部分——《重写反补贴法以适应中国特色》，讨论自中国加入世贸组织十年来第一部针对美中贸易制定的美国法律。过去几年里，针对中国及其货币政策的法案数不胜数，但是H.R. 4105是第一部获得两党及总统支持、允许向非市场经济体征收反补贴税的法案。

我们将于下周刊登评述的第二部分，严厉批评这一法案，因为它违背了美国为鼓励中国接受国际法体系而做出的承诺，且不符合世贸组织章程。费德门博士指出这一法案使法院裁决失效并与世贸组织裁决相左，因此它暗示中国依靠法治与美国解决贸易争端是死路一条。

文章的第三部分指出美国依据世贸组织章程及美国法律处理美中贸易，与美国依照世贸组织、《北美自由贸易协定》及本土法律处理美加贸易如出一辙。美国在司法程序中落败后，立即修改法律。费德门博士将分析此举对美加贸易关系的冲击，并预测中国将做出不同反应、且面临更多威胁。

重写反补贴法以适应中国特色

        美国国会多年来一直对急需讨论的事项争执不休，只有一个例外——中国。当与中国正面冲突时，国会总是突然统一战线，还获得总统支持。就像美国全国对外贸易委员会( National Foreign Trade Council) 主席Bill Reinsch所指出的那样：“过去二十多年里，每个竞选总统职位的在野党候选人总是指责总统对待中国太软弱。包括本届政府在内的任何智慧、准备充分的政府都竭尽全力（针对中国）采取更严厉的贸易举措。”

奥巴马政府以及共和党候选人都一致认为中国采取不公平贸易政策。国会仅用三个月时间就通过这一法案令人惊讶，几天后总统就签署了这一法案。

国会介入之前

本博客曾报道美国联邦上诉庭于2011年12月19日宣判——美国法律禁止向非市场经济体征收反补贴税（见GPX轮胎公司诉美国一案）。2012年3月8日美国众议院通过法案，驳回上诉庭裁决，重新书写美国法律。

自1986年至2006年11月，乔治城钢铁公司诉美国一案的裁决是美国处理与非市场经济贸易的法律依据。这一裁决指出，“补贴”是政府采取的扰乱市场的财政行为，因此没有市场即意味没有补贴，而非市场经济体政府只是为自身提供补贴。

2006年11月中期选举时，民主党重新掌控国会，美国商务部两周后立即接受反补贴调查申请对国产铜版纸展开调查。此后，美国企业习以为常地提出双反调查申请，而美国商务部也养成采用非市场经济体计算方法、对中国产品双重征税的做法。

美国国际贸易法院分别于2009年及2010年10月驳回美国商务部在GPX轮胎案中做出的反补贴裁决。世贸组织2011年3月的裁决支持这一法院裁决，只是适用范围稍窄。这些裁决并未认定对非市场经济体征收反补贴税属于违法行为或违背世贸承诺，而是指出同时展开双反调查可导致增加惩罚性关税，即双重征税。美国国际贸易法院裁定商务部应在修正双重征税后才可同时展开双反调查。

上诉法院在GPX一案中跳过双重征税，直接讨论乔治城钢铁案的前提，认为这一案例法禁止向非市场经济体征收反补贴税。

国会救驾

美国国会在2012年几乎未就任何议案达成协议，仅在针对中国的行动中意见统一。中国疆域辽阔，几乎所有的美国人都相信1.3亿中国人在遥远的东方努力生产产品直至取代美国产业，造成大量美国人失业。而这一切都离不开中国共产党中央政府提供的财政支持。

自1949年新中国成立以来，资本主义美国对中国的印象并未改观。传统、同情中国的美国观点以赛珍珠的《大地》为代表，但这一观点随着冷战的推移而转变。在越战和朝鲜战争中，美国人看到中国人滔滔不绝地涌入半岛，威胁民主国家的存亡。当前，美国民众眼前浮现的是数以万计辛勤劳动的工人机械地做着枯燥乏味的工作，这其中还包括备受剥削的童工。他们的劳动成果是共产党中国与西方列强竞争的重要支柱。

历任美国总统都努力改变美国人心目中这些错位印象，然而两年一次的美国国会选举都选择中国作为批评目标。2011年12月上诉庭三位法官意见一致的裁决开启了计时器——如果没有全体法官出庭重新判决、或是诉状移送令移送至最高法院（两者都不可能），则所有先前已宣布的调查结果都将失效、当前正展开的反补贴调查也将被迫中止。只有美国国会可以改变这一切，而国会的这一举动深入民心（现在共和党人也承认两党对华态度一致）。

众议院筹款委员会在委员会讨论该议案的当日，也就是2月29日，将这一议案提交众议院全体讨论。不到一周，即3月6日，该委员会共和党主席又暂停常规以加快这一法案的通过。同日，众议院也暂停常规，讨论并以370票对39票通过了这一议案。第二天，这一议案送交参议院。

3月7日，参议院讨论并全票通过了这一议案。次日这一法案被送交白宫，奥巴马总统于3月13日签署了这一法案。人们也许会问，如此迅速讨论是否常见？答案是并不常见，但快速通过人人赞同的中国议案却非常普遍。

法案的权责范围

第112届国会众议院第H.R. 4105号法案——《非市场经济国家适用1930年关税法反补贴条款》，正式立法明文要求向非市场经济国家出口的商品征收反补贴税（当这个国家仅有一个经济体时例外）。这一法案仅沿用了乔治城钢铁案中对补贴的论述，同时支持美国商务部2007年就中国产品征收反补贴税的逻辑：中国存在一定市场经济活动，因此存在补贴；但是不足以成为市场经济体，因为没有一个行业以市场为指导。通过这一法案前，这一立场无论从逻辑还是法律角度看都立不住脚，但是现在忽然却拥有法律支持。

一开始，筹款委员会主席米歇根州Dave Camp众议员为首的众议院共和党人抵制这一新议案，因此这一议案新增了“调整向非市场经济国家出口品征收的反倾销税。”Camp众议员担心这一议案将违反世贸组织承诺，因为2011年世贸组织上诉机构的裁定禁止双重征税。奥巴马政府在公开场合避免就这一议案是否实现了Camp的目标发表官方评论。2012年3月13日白宫新闻发布会上，有记者提问：“中国商务部部长认为总统签署的这一法案不仅违背了世贸章程，也违背了美国贸易法。”白宫新闻发言人Jay Carney回答：“我并未获悉这一评论。总统签署了这一法案，显然他认为这一议案应当成为法律。因此我对中国官员的意见没有任何评论。”

在私下场合，白宫坚信这一法案符合世贸组织章程。遗憾的是，中国商务部长的意见正确，这一法案与世贸章程相左。

H.R. 4105指令美国商务部在调查发现反补贴、反倾销同时存在时，应“降低反倾销税税率，即减去调查机构估计的反倾销税平均税率。”但是降低幅度取决于“美国商务部合理估计反补贴税、以及在反倾销调查中使用的正常价值导致这一类产品反倾销税平均税率的增加幅度。”当美国商务部无法估计这一幅度时，它就无法调整平均税率，但是根据法律规定，它还必须征收反补贴税。这一法律以及国际贸易法庭停止反补贴调查的裁决都针对美国商务部行动，但是国际贸易法庭最后总结认定美国商务部应停止行动，但是这一法案却要求商务部必须采取行动。

国际贸易法庭下令美国商务部在征收反补贴税前找出解决双重征税的方法。新法案却要求商务部先征收反补贴税然后找出解决方案。新法案虽然已经出台，但是美国商务部却并未增加解决双重征税这一难题的可能性，而且还必须依法双重征税。非市场经济国家的企业则必须针对双重征税逐一通过法律途径抗争。

最后，这一新法案的生效日期亦令人惊愕，因为这一法案适用于“2006年11月20日起展开的反补贴调查。”美国商务部因此必须忽视美国国际贸易法庭及上诉庭裁决，重新审理自这一日期以来所有针对中国和越南产品的反补贴调查。并在能力允许的范围内，找到克服双重征税的方法。调查申请人因此享受他们在递交申请时法律并未授予的权利。

申请重新审理

美国政府及其调查申请方只可通过两个渠道维持GPX轮胎案以及其他针对中国和越南产品展开的反补贴调查的结果：国会行动或是在3月5日前通过联邦上诉庭重新审判。虽然国会加速审议通过这一法案，但还是迟了一步。

截至3月5日，美国司法部以及劳工联合会等申请人分别向联邦上诉庭提出重新审理要求。因为上诉庭的裁决已为最终裁决，因此H.R. 4105不适用于GPX轮胎案中的利害关系方。只有法院可以驳回这一裁决。这一法案也无法触及已经颁布的24项反补贴令以及6项正在进行的调查（法院未就其中任何一项调查做出最终裁决），只有重新审理可以帮助GPX案的反补贴调查申请方。