China-U.S. Trade Law : International Trade Lawyer & Attorney : Baker Hostetler Law Firm : Trade Remedies, Customs & Export Controls

中文请点击这里

The Obama Administration has no trade policy and, as institutions have been functioning and trade laws have been interpreted for more than a decade, it can’t. The institutions, laws, and regulations of the United States convey control and formulation of trade policy into private hands. Although the Obama Administration might seek to wrest control of trade policy, it has elected to assign trade no priority. Key political appointments have not been made or have neglected to tap trade expertise; initiatives have not been taken in Congress. The President has followed the law, but has not tried to shape it. He has extolled the virtues of free trade, but he has not tried to achieve it. At most, he has resisted attempts to circumscribe it, as much because of the circumstances as out of any conviction.

Most of the important enterprises in China are state-owned. Although there is much the central government does not control, it commands far more of the Chinese economy than the U.S. government can control of the American economy. China has placed a high priority on trade policy, and pursues its trade objectives vigorously.

Unfortunately, much of Chinese trade policy is reactive, and built on misinterpretations and misunderstandings of the actions of others, especially the United States. Were a full trade war to emerge, it would be more the result of incomprehension than of malice.

The Institutions And Laws Of American Trade Policy

The United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, empowers Congress to “collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” and assigns Congress exclusive authority “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” Institutionally, authority over international trade belongs to Congress.

Trade policy is formulated in two congressional subcommittees, in the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives and in the Finance Committee of the Senate. These committees operate as all committees of Congress, brokering competing interests of their members. Their members are there to protect the industries, and the jobs they provide, in their respective states. Although in some instances there may be manufacturers who require inputs from abroad, and in some others constituents may produce for foreign markets, for the most part the members focus on what is produced within their states and for a domestic market. Consequently, these committees are inherently protectionist.

Until implementation of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1916, conferring upon Congress “power to lay and collect taxes on incomes,” the primary source of revenue for the United States was duties on foreign goods. At the same time, Congress created in 1916 the Tariff Commission, which was to reexamine and reorganize the incoherent approach to duties that had been funding the government. Thus, American trade policy was founded constitutionally on the collection of revenues from imports, and U.S. laws into the 1930s promoted the collection of revenues and severe limitations on imports, infamously in the Tariff Act of 1930, known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, that many historians consider to have been a significant contributor to global Depression.

Contemporary trade law in the United States largely reflects a reaction against the fallout of Smoot-Hawley, interpreting international agreements that progressively over a sixty year period liberalized trade by reducing tariffs. Not entirely coincidental was the ability of the United States to finance its government operations with an income tax instead of customs duties. Nonetheless, the framework and apparatus of trade liberalization promoted exceptions and special arrangements to satisfy the legislators constitutionally empowered to regulate foreign commerce. Trade remedy laws tightened as tariffs reduced, supporting a common view that foreigners may “cheat” and export to the U.S. dumped and subsidized goods.

There are three principal U.S. agencies dealing with trade policy. The oldest is a cabinet position in the executive branch of government, the Department of Commerce. The task of the Department of Commerce is to implement the laws on trade passed by Congress. Commerce, therefore, theoretically has no authority to formulate or develop trade policy, which is embodied in congressional statutes. But Commerce does write the regulations that elaborate on and implement statutes. It also interprets the statutes and regulations. Through these two powers – writing regulations, interpreting statutes and regulations -- Commerce has more to say about trade policy than any other government agency.

The second is the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which is in the Executive Office of the President. USTR, created initially in 1962, negotiates trade agreements and enforces them, usually but not always through dispute resolution at the World Trade Organization. USTR comes closest to articulating and carrying out the interests of the President in trade, but also answers to Congress.

Finally, the United States International Trade Commission grew out of the Tariff Commission that was created in 1916. Congress in 1954 assigned the Tariff Commission responsibility, which had been in the Department of the Treasury, for determining whether dumping (the antidumping law having been passed in 1921) caused a U.S. industry material injury, a prerequisite for imposing duties arising from unfair trade. Commerce gave the ITC the same responsibility for countervailing duty cases in 1979 following the Tokyo Round of trade negotiations and passage of a new Tariff Act. The ITC is an “independent” agency responsible directly to Congress, not to the executive branch.

The trade laws have three main features: specific tariff reductions and rate-setting; treaties and agreements for trade arrangements, including non-tariff barriers and intellectual property; global capital flows have led often to treatment of trade and investment together such that bilateral investment treaties have become a frequent subject of trade negotiations. Treaties and agreements, nonetheless, are mostly for tariffs but also for preferences and dispute resolution; and trade remedies. Tariff reductions and rate-setting typically follow bilateral or multilateral agreements. They are expressions of policy only to the extent that the United States has defined a policy mutually with other countries. Unilateral trade policy, the choices of the United States without requiring agreement with anyone else, is confined to trade remedies.

Trade Remedy Laws Are Public Policy By Default

The central feature of trade remedy laws in the United States is that private parties decide which merchandise, and from which countries, will be subject to trade remedy actions. Formally, the Department of Commerce has discretion to decide whether to initiate an investigation, but Congress has fashioned the law to make investigations almost inevitable upon the presentation of a petition, provided the petitioner satisfies statutory requirements.

Congress has created offices, in both the Department of Commerce and at the International Trade Commission, to assist domestic industries preparing petitions. Before filing, petitioners typically know whether they have satisfied the requirements and whether the petition will be accepted. These offices exist to help and encourage petitioners. Congress wants the executive branch to protect domestic industries. To that extent, there is a policy, developed by Congress, inscribed in the laws and institutions.

The International Trade Commission conducts a preliminary investigation to decide whether full investigations will follow. The thresholds for this decision, however, again set by Congress, is very low. It is unusual to stop an investigation at the preliminary stage because of the statutory criteria. Once an investigation is fully underway, the market for the goods involved is distorted and there are significant trade effects.

It is also difficult for foreign interests to defeat a petition in the final determination, particularly for non-market economies. The Commerce Department has great flexibility to select surrogate values and find that government prices or domestic costs are below market values or world market prices. Some Chinese products have been found not to cause or threaten material injury to a U.S. industry (a prerequisite finding for trade restrictions), but the considerable majority of petitions result in antidumping and countervailing duty orders.

The Administration has nothing to say about which industries will petition, and not much to say about which petitions will lead to antidumping or countervailing duty orders. Congress keeps a close eye on the progress of petitions and often makes sure that Commerce officials adhere to the law. The inherent biases in the law written by Congress favor petitioners.

Congressmen and senators often testify in public hearings before the International Trade Commission on behalf of their constituent industries. Neither congressmen nor senators testify on behalf of importers or foreign producers. Congress funds the Commission.

To the extent that cumulative trade actions against foreign merchandise can be interpreted as a trade policy, it is in the United States a trade policy by default. Private parties, not the government, take most of the decisions, because they decide which industries or products will be challenged, and they choose the allegations. The law, developed by Congress over many years, generally leads to antidumping and countervailing duty orders. As long as petitioners can satisfy the criteria set out by Congress, they can restrict or interfere with trade.

The Contrast Of Trade Remedies With China

Chinese trade law has a “public interest” clause. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce (“MOFCOM”) can decide not to initiate an investigation even when a petition satisfies all legal criteria. The President of the United States has a similar power to prevent the imposition of a trade remedy for policy reasons in intellectual property cases arising under Section 337 of the Tariff Act, but not under provisions of the law for antidumping and countervailing duties.

Chinese officials do use this provision. A petition was filed in the autumn of 2009 seeking antidumping and countervailing duty investigations of wood pulp from Canada. China has a robust paper industry. China does not have, however, abundant commercial forests. It imports wood and other forest products, including substantial quantities of wood pulp. MOFCOM concluded, after an internal inquiry, that it would not be in the public interest to restrict the flow of wood pulp from Canada because, MOFCOM apparently reasoned, it was more important to support the Chinese paper industry than the nascent and inevitably limited wood pulp industry. The investigations, whatever the merits of the petitions may have been, were not initiated.

This option, referring to the public interest, does not exist for American authorities. Hence, China can decide which investigations will be pursued, and which will not. It can choose which industries to protect, and which to leave to market forces even when there may be unfair competition from abroad.

There are also important procedural differences that affect trade remedies as an expression of public policy. In the United States, the filing of a petition is a public event. The International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce alert the public to a new petition as soon as it is filed, and the Department of Commerce has twenty days from the filing to determine whether to initiate an investigation. In a similar time span, the International Trade Commission must convene a public “staff conference” to hear arguments on whether it is likely, should investigations go forward, that it will find material injury or a threat of material injury. Parties must prepare for the staff conference, so everything about the case except confidential, business proprietary information submitted subject to administrative protective orders is public.

The public process of petitioning and launching investigations guarantees that Congress will insure the initial success of a petition satisfying minimal criteria by enabling congressmen to keep track of all developments. Consequently, the ability of private industry to dictate the public policy is assured.

In China, again by contrast, the filing of a petition is confidential and not made public, although MOFCOM officials are known to leak the existence, and often the details, of petitions to select Chinese law firms. Unlike the twenty day fire drill in the United States to challenge the petition at the Department of Commerce and convene a staff conference at the ITC, MOFCOM has sixty days to decide whether to initiate an investigation. Because the filing of the petition is not public, no one can know with any certainty when (or even whether ) a petition has been filed, and so the running of the sixty day clock is entirely in the hands (and knowledge) of MOFCOM.

The very existence of petitioners is also effectively secret in China. Consequently, if MOFCOM were to self-initiate an investigation, it could do so easily in the name of an industry or companies, especially if they were state-owned. MOFCOM put dates and an association name on the receipt and initiation of a countervailing duty investigation into saloon cars from the United States in November 2009, but specific companies in the association were not identified and many international trade observers speculated that the petition was developed at, by, and for MOFCOM.
It may be that the automobile petition should be taken at face value, filed by an association on behalf of an industry. However, the lack of transparency in the Chinese system invites speculation, which cannot happen in the United States. There has been but one Commerce Department self-initiation in U.S. trade history, against softwood lumber from Canada in 1991 (there is disagreement as to whether an antidumping investigation was self-initiated in 1986 against DRAMs). It is certain, because of the transparency of the process, that there have been no others.

In trade remedies, then, the United States cannot have a public policy, as control of the process and the outcomes is in private hands, dictated by Congress to encourage piecemeal protectionism. In China, by contrast, the government can initiate an investigation in the name of an industry, marrying trade policy to industrial policy to favor certain economic sectors. It can decline to investigate in the public interest. Hence, the government can decide what will be investigated and when, which industries it will protect, and which will be exposed to the market, whether fairly or unfairly. Those choices express public policy.

Trade Negotiations And Public Policy

Most observers equate trade policy with the negotiation of trade agreements. The United States, however, does not enter trade negotiations like any other country. The authority to sign a trade agreement is vested constitutionally in the President (Article 2, Section 2), but the regulation of Commerce is the preserve of Congress. Consequently, the President can sign an agreement, but Congress can change it before it is implemented as U.S. law.

Congress historically has changed treaties and agreements signed by the President, or rejected them outright, most famously refusing to join the League of Nations after World War I. Congress also rejected the original international trade organization, concomitant to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”) after World War II. The United States came to be known internationally as an unreliable negotiation partner because countries could not count on the signature of the President as the last word for an agreement. Congress could change the terms, or reject the agreement altogether.

To compensate for this problem, Congress agreed to create “fast track” authority, later called by President George W. Bush “trade promotion authority,” whereby Congress could accept or reject a trade agreement signed by the President, but could not change it. The existence of this authority enabled the United States credibly to negotiate trade agreements.

Today, there are three bilateral trade agreements that President Bush negotiated with trade promotion authority but that he failed to present to Congress for an up or down vote before the authority expired. President Obama has not sought and has not received a restoration of this authority. Consequently, Congress has not elected to vote on these agreements, which have been languishing between two and three years.

Without trade promotion authority, the President cannot credibly negotiate trade agreements. The Doha Round stalled over agricultural subsidies in 2008, before the election of President Obama. Today, however, progress is impossible without the engagement of the United States, and the President cannot engage credibly without authority from Congress that he has not received. Consequently, as to trade negotiations, the United States has no policy, and cannot pursue one, because the President does not have effective authority and Congress has chosen not to act on agreements already signed.

China has none of these problems. Its leaders can negotiate with unlimited confidence that their choices will meet with domestic approval. Their negotiating partners know that whatever Chinese leaders sign will be reliable. China, therefore, can fashion a negotiating trade policy: it can decide with whom it wants to reach agreements, and over what, with respect to both specific merchandise and dispute resolution, but also with respect to intellectual property, joint venturing, bilateral and multilateral arrangements, and whatever else may arise in the domain of international commerce. It can, and does, focus as a country on exchanges and agreements that will bring more natural resources to China, and on broader trade issues as well.

The Staffing Problem

When President Obama was first assembling his Cabinet, he asked Congressman Xavier Bercera about becoming his Trade Representative. Congressman Bercera turned down the offer, saying that he did not believe the President was going to assign international trade a high priority. Eventually, President Obama named the Mayor of Dallas, Texas as his trade representative. Ron Kirk’s instincts, like President Obama’s, favor free trade, based on his experience with the value of NAFTA for Texas and Mexico. But no one pretended when he was named that Ambassador Kirk was a trade expert, and conspicuously senior staffing at USTR was done primarily from the congressional trade subcommittees. As befits the history and character of Congress and trade, Ambassador Kirk’s staff was not populated with committed free traders.

To the extent the President might have wanted to pursue freer global trade through new international agreements, he has neither the authority (no trade promotion authority) nor the staff. Congressman Bercera was right in his assessment, and no trade policy has emerged from the Administration. Without congressional authorization and support, moreover, none is possible.
Arguably the most important position in international trade in the United States is not the more visible Trade Representative, but the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the Import Administration. The occupant of this position decides in most instances the pursuit of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations, and decides their outcomes. She signs the final determinations with duty rates and with decisions over the countervailability of foreign government programs.

As of June 2010, eighteen months into his Administration, President Obama has not nominated a candidate to fill this politically sensitive policy-making position. The Acting Assistant Secretary is a former Bush Administration official, and the office, therefore, carries over from the Bush years. To the extent a trade policy emerges from the Import Administration of the Commerce Department, the policy was developed by President Bush, not President Obama.

Notwithstanding inclinations toward partisan interpretations that would make Republicans free traders and Democrats protectionists (see Part I of this article), it was President Bush’s Assistant Secretary for the Import Administration who chose to initiate a countervailing duty investigation against non-market economy China and thereby to increase significantly trade restrictions. That decision defined an important element of a trade policy, but conspicuously not of the Administration’s own initiative. Private parties petitioned for countervailing duties against coated free sheet paper from China. The Administration had to decide whether to initiate, or whether to reject the petition. Reactions to private initiatives may constitute cumulatively a trade policy, but by default if not by accident.

Once the judicial process upheld the lawfulness of the countervailing duty investigation in a non-market economy, there was little the Obama Administration could do to change it. Then, too, no Obama official has been named as Assistant Secretary.

The statute governing the ITC requires six commissioners, three from each political party, serving nine-year terms. Nominated by the President, commissioners must be confirmed by the Senate. Often the appointees have served on trade committee staffs in Congress. The confirmation process for them often produces debate over trade policy, but such debates cannot affect policy once appointments have been confirmed. Presidents must make appointments to maintain the partisan balance on the Commission, so cannot necessarily choose a candidate from their own party.

The composition of the Commission often does reflect partisan proclivities, with Republicans more inclined to rely on economic modeling and analysis and Democrats more likely to sympathize with claims of injury. Yet, Democrat Janet Nuzum, as Vice Chair, for example, was far more sensitive to the merits of free trade than some of her Republican colleagues, and Republicans on the current Commission frequently sympathize with domestic industry. Regardless, there is little Congress or the President can do to give the Commission direction because of the nine-year terms, during which the President cannot remove a commissioner.

The United States v. China

The United States pursues trade remedies to the extent, and with reference to particular goods, dictated by private sector initiatives. Occasionally it is possible to articulate a policy, as in accepting petitions alleging countervailable subsidies in non-market economies, but mostly the Administration has little to say and even less that it can do. The Obama Administration has resisted the entreaties of many in Congress to countervail Chinese currency valuation, but Congress could legislate an administrative requirement that would leave the Administration little choice.

Choices typically are few, but there are some. The Bush Administration rejected all safeguard actions against China. The Obama Administration accepted the one safeguard brought before it. It is altogether too easy, however, to misread this difference and the relevant implications. Despite many predictions, no safeguard action has been requested against Chinese merchandise since the case on tires, and the looming expiration of the safeguard provision makes further actions improbable. It would be an exaggeration to claim a policy out of the one case, particularly when paired with the Administration’s persistent position on currency valuation. None of the cases brought to President Bush carried anything like the domestic political implications of the tires case.

The Obama Administration has considered trade policy through tax policy, but essentially because of jobs. Proposals abound to tax heavily the corporate offshoring of jobs, and to expand the uniquely worldwide reach of the U.S. income tax. Such indirect instruments, however, can only hint at a trade policy, and not as a commentary on trade itself.

China seems to see in every trade investigation and in every imposed duty a policy hostile to China. China declared its investigations into chicken parts and automobiles from the United States in November 2009 expressly retaliatory, as if the tires safeguard were deliberately provocative. China read the President’s actions as aimed at China, without acknowledgment of the domestic politics that dominated and constrained his options. Publicly, at least, China also therefore took little note of the nuanced elements of the President’s actions, which were avoiding insult to the head of the National People’s Congress, setting rates that would keep the Chinese industry in business, avoiding excessive publicity for a potentially high-profile action by calibrating an announcement on a weekend. Instead, China decided to make the decision a centerpiece for antagonism, collapsing into the one case an apocalyptic view of U.S. trade policy.

The United States cannot have a coherent trade policy, particularly as to trade remedies. The merchandise in dispute and the allegations to be investigated are all defined by private parties often backed by powerful interest groups capable of delivering or denying votes and campaign resources in a perpetual electoral cycle. Retaliation against imagined trade policies, policies thought to be coherent and deliberate, can have little or no effect in shaping the future. There is no point in China pursuing a retaliatory trade policy because such retaliation cannot change what will happen in trade in the United States. Retaliation would have to anticipate, continuously, the next, most powerful interests seeking trade remedies, an impossible task.

China needs to look more closely at U.S. law and appreciate more presidential constraints where the Constitution delivers all authority over foreign commerce to Congress. It needs to be at the negotiating table when the law calls for negotiation (again, see Trade War?), and it needs to protect its own industries only when facing unfair trade and such protection is in the public interest. A policy based on retaliation, where the recipient of the retaliation (the Administration) cannot react or adjust, is a wasted policy opportunity to no one’s long term advantage.

For the United States, the President could do more to create at least an impression about trade commitments. He could nominate an Assistant Secretary of Commerce. He could ask Congress for trade promotion authority. He could engage seriously the defects in the pending, unratified trade agreements. He could take on the agricultural subsidies that contribute mightily to the deficit, paralyze the Doha Round, and drain the Treasury exceptionally, as in the resolution of the cotton dispute with Brazil by continuing to subsidize the domestic industry and then subsidizing Brazil as well. All these steps together still might not translate into a coherent policy on trade, but they would suggest a President who means what he says when he promises the G-20 to resist protectionism, when he champions an expansion of exports, when he extols the virtues of freedom, whether trading in ideas, or in goods.
 

        奥巴马政府没有贸易政策，但是因为美国体系和贸易法早在十多年前就已建立，所以不可能拥有。美国的这一体系、法律和规定导致商业团体控制、制定贸易政策。虽然奥巴马政府可能希望获得控制贸易政策的权利，但是贸易并不是奥巴马政府的重要事项。奥巴马政府至今尚未任命所有主管贸易的政府高管，也并不重视任命经验丰富的贸易专家，国会也没有主动采取措施。奥巴马总统履行法律，但并未试图改革法律。他歌颂自由贸易的益处，但是并未努力实现自由贸易。他最大的努力是抵制企图阻碍自由贸易的行动。

         国有企业在重要中国企业中占很大比重。虽然北京政府并不掌管中国经济生活的各个层面，但它的影响力远远超过美国政府对美国经济的影响。中国给予贸易政策重要地位，并努力实现贸易目标。

         令人遗憾的是中国贸易政策大多是反射型政策，同时建立在对他国政策的错误理解基础之上，尤其是对美国政策的错误理解。如果贸易战真的发生，那是因为错误的理解而非出于恶意。

美国贸易政策体系及法律
        美国宪法第一章第八条授权国会“征收税、关税及企业所得税”，同时给予国会特权“管理对外贸易”。从体制角度着眼，美国国会拥有管理国际贸易的权力。

        大国会委员会负责制定贸易政策：众议院筹款委员会和参议院金融委员会。这两大委员会与其他国会委员会的运作方式相同——在不同成员相互竞争的利益间寻找平衡点。委员会成员保护本州产业及这些产业内的就业机会。虽然有时生产商可能需要国外原材料，另一些选区内的企业为国外市场生产，但是委员会成员关注的重点是州内生产的产品及国内市场。因此，这两大委员会与生俱来是贸易保护主义者。

        1916年实施的宪章第6条修正案给予国会“征收收入所得税”，在此之前美国的主要财政收入是向进口品征收关税。国会在同一年建立了关税委员会试图重新考察、改革不统一的税收制度。由此可见，美国贸易政策的宪法渊源是向进口品征收关税，许多历史学家认为1930年关税法案（亦称为斯姆特-霍利关税法）导致全球经济大萧条进一步恶化。

        当前美国贸易法是对斯姆特-霍利关税法影响的反应，解读六十年来通过降低关税不断开放贸易的国际贸易协定。与此同时却并不完全巧合的是，美国政府可依赖收入所得税、而非关税支付政府开支。但是，贸易自由化框架催生了使立法者根据宪法行使管理国际贸易的权利以外的特例。贸易补偿法随着关税降低而不断紧缩，支持公众持有的外国人可能不诚实地向美国倾销或是出售享受补助的产品。

        三大美国机构执行贸易政策。历史最悠久的是内阁级的美国商务部。美国商务部的职责是实施国会通过的贸易法。因此，根据宪法，商务部没有权力制定发展贸易政策。但是商务部起草阐述、实施贸易法的规定，同时拥有解释法律、规定的权力。通过这两大权力——制定规定、阐述法规规定——商务部是政府部门中对贸易政策最具影响的部门。

        第二个政府部门是美国贸易代表办公室，它是总统办公室的一部分。贸易代表办公室与1962年成立，通常通过、但不总是通过世贸组织谈判实施贸易协定。贸易代表办公室最清晰地代表总统意见，但不总是对国会负责。

        最后是美国国际贸易委员会，它的前身是1916年建立的关税委员会。国会于1954年授权关税委员会取代美国财政部裁定倾销（反倾销法于1921年通过）是否造成美国产业受损，产业受损是征收反倾销税的前提。东京会谈结束后，国会于1979年通过新关税法，同时授权国际贸易委员会在反补贴调查中担任相同职责。国际贸易委员会直接向国会汇报，而非对总统负责。

        贸易法具有三大重点：关税制定或减免；包括非关税障碍及知识产权在内的贸易协定；全球资金流通催生了双边投资协定。协定主要涉及关税、但也包括优惠政策和争端解决及贸易补偿。关税减免及设定通常通过双边或多边协定决定。只有当美国和其他国家携手确定政策后，这些协定才形成政策。美国未经与他国的协商而制定的单边贸易政策只能称为贸易补偿。

贸易补偿法系公共政策
        美国贸易补偿法的主要特征是商业团体决定哪国出口的哪些商品面临贸易补偿行动。美国商务部决定是否展开调查，但是国会制定的法律规定一旦递交的调查申请书满足法律规定，商务部不得不展开调查。

        国会规定美国商务部和国际贸易委员会设立办公室帮助本土企业准备申请书。在正式递交申请书之前，申请方一般知道他们是否满足法律规定、以及申请书是否会被接受。这些办公室的设立是为了帮助、鼓励调查申请。国会希望行政部门保护本国企业。从这一角度着眼，国会的确发展了一政策，并将其包括在法律和体制之中。

        美国国际贸易委员会进行一简单调查以确定是否应展开全面调查。但是国会设订了是否展开全面调查的标准，并将标准设得很低。因此，国际贸易委员会很难在初始阶段就终止调查。当调查全面展开时，这一产品市场将受影响并导致严重贸易后果。

        同时以非市场经济体为代表的国外利益也很难在最后阶段挫败申请。美国商务部可任意选择第三国价值、裁定销售价格低于市场价格或全球市场价格。某些中国产品被裁定未造成美国产业损害或形成威胁（这是限制贸易的前提条件），但是大多数申请书以反倾销、反补贴税令告终。

        政府不能决定哪一产业递交申请书，也不能确定哪些申请书将以反补贴、反倾销令告终。国会密切关注调查并确保商务部官员遵守法律。国会制定的法律总是偏向申请方。

        参众两院议员经常代表选区的企业参加美国国际贸易委员举行的公开听证会上并作证发言。没有议员代表进口商或是国外生产企业发言。国会向国际贸易委员提供财政拨款。

        如果不断积累的贸易行动可被解释为贸易行动，那么美国拥有贸易政策。商业团体而非政府具有发言权，因为它们决定哪些产业的哪些产品面临贸易行动、并决定指控。美国国会多年来制定的法律通常导致反倾销、反补贴令。只要申请人可以满足国会设立的标准，他就可以限制或影响贸易。

中美贸易补偿的差别
         中国贸易法包括“公众利益”一款。即使申请书满足所有法律条件，但是中国商务部可决定不展开调查。在根据贸易法337款展开的知识产权调查中，美国总统具有同等权利、可出于政治考虑不采取贸易补偿行动，但是反倾销、反补贴法中没有类似条款。

        中国官员也使用这一条款。2009年秋的一份申请书要求对加拿大纸浆展开反倾销、反补贴调查。中国造纸业发达，但却没有丰富的商业森林资源，因此必须进口包括木材、纸浆在内的林业产品。中国商务部内部研究后认定限制加拿大纸浆进口将不符合公众利益，因为支持中国造纸产业比支持规模有限的纸浆产业更重要。因此，虽然申请书可能十分令人信服，但是商务部却未展开调查。

        美国政府却没有公众利益这一选择。中国可选择对哪些申请展开调查、或不展开调查；保护哪些产业、或让市场力量左右其他产业的命运，即使这些产业面临不公平的国外贸易竞争。

         程序差别也影响贸易补偿这一贸易政策。在美国，递交申请书是公开事件。美国国际贸易委员会和美国商务部接到申请后将立即通知公众，同时商务部将在20天内做出是否展开调查的决定。在几乎相等的时间内，国际贸易委员会必须召开工作会议以探讨如果展开调查，是否会发现该进口品对美国产业造成损害或损害威胁。涉案方必须为这一工作会议作准备，公众可查阅除受法律保护的、含商业机密的文件以外的任何文件。

        递交申请书、展开调查的公开化可保证国会可跟踪案件发展、监督这一初始程序满足国会设立的较低标准。因此，商业团体左右公共政策得以实现。

        与此相反，在中国递交申请在秘密状态中进行，但是中国商务部官员时常向中国律师事务所泄露有关信息乃至细节。美国政府机构只有20天时间决定是否展开调查，但是中国商务部拥有长达60天的时间考虑是否展开调查。因为申请书是秘密递交的，因此没有人可以确切了解申请书是否被递交、何时被递交，因此这60天时间完全在中国商务部掌控之中。

        在中国，申请人也属于机密。因此，如果商务部希望展开一调查，它可以以某一产业或是企业的名义（尤其是国有企业的名义）递交申请。2009年11月，中国商务部把某一行业协会的名字放在要求对美产越野车和小汽车展开反补贴调查的申请书上，但是却没有该协会成员企业的任何信息。因此很多国际贸易观察家猜测这份申请书的作者其实是中国商务部。

        或许我们应当相信这份申请书的确是代表该产业的行业协会递交的。但是，因为中国的体制缺少透明度所以引来种种猜测，这在美国不会发生。迄今为止，美国贸易史上仅有一起自发调查——1991年针对加拿大软木（也有人认为1986年针对动态随机存取存储器展开的反倾销调查也是自发调查，但人们对这一观点存在争议）。但是因为美国的体制透明，所以可以肯定的一点是没有其他自发调查。

        由于商业团体控制贸易调查过程和结果、国会鼓励保护主义，所以美国不可能拥有贸易补偿政策。与其相反，中国政府可以以产业界名义展开调查，将贸易政策和工业政策相结合鼓励某些经济产业的发展。它可以公众利益的名义拒绝展开调查。因此，政府可决定于何时对哪一产业展开调查、哪一产业应受保护、哪一产业应面临公平或是不公平的市场挑战。这些选择是政策的表现。

贸易谈判和公共政策
        许多观察家把贸易政策等同于贸易协定谈判。但是美国与其他国家的贸易谈判很不相同。根据宪法，总统与他国签订贸易协定，国会负责管理贸易。因此，总统可以签订协定，但是国会可以在制定实施该协定的法律时修改这一协定。

         回顾历史，国会曾修改总统签订的协定，甚至拒绝接受这些协定，最著名的例子是拒绝加入一次世界大战后成立的国联。国会也拒绝国际贸易组织，这是二战后成立的关贸总协定前身。在国际舞台上，美国被视为不可靠的谈判伙伴，因为美国总统的签字并不具有最后发言权。国会可修改某些条款，乃至拒绝这一协定。

        为修正这一弊病，美国国会授予总统“快速通道”权利，在小布什总统任内被称为“促进贸易权利”。根据这一授权，国会可以接受或拒绝总统签署的贸易协定，但不可以改变。这一授权使美国参与国际协定谈判时更具信服力。

        布什总统根据促进贸易权力谈判了三份双边贸易协定，但却未能在该权利过期前递交国会投票表决。奥巴马总统并未寻求、也未得到这一授权。因此，虽然这三个协定早在两三年前就已达成，国会至今尚未就这三个协定投票。

        没有促进贸易权利，总统无法在贸易谈判中施展影响。2008年，在奥巴马总统就任前，多哈会谈因农业补助而停滞不前。但是今天因为缺少美国参与而无法前进，而总统因为没有国会授权也无法推动谈判。因此，在贸易谈判领域美国没有政策，也无法制定政策，因为总统没有授权、国会决定不对已经签署的协定采取行动。

        中国没有这些问题。中国领导人在谈判时充满信心，确信协定将得到国内支持。他们的谈判伙伴也深知中国领导人签署的协定是可信的。因此，中国在贸易谈判中可制定政策：它可确定签署协议的伙伴国家、就哪些事项（如产品或是争端、知识产权、合资企业、双边及多边协定等国际商贸的其他领域）进行谈判。它可针对、且已经通过谈判协定，确保更多资源流向中国、以及更广泛的贸易议题。

成员任命问题
        当奥巴马总统刚刚组建内阁时，他邀请议员Xavier Bercera担任国际贸易代表。但是Bercera议员婉言拒绝了邀请，指出他不相信总统将把国际贸易视为重点。最后，奥巴马总统任命德州达拉斯市市长柯克（Ron Kirk）为贸易代表。从他对《北美自由贸易协定》的态度来看，柯克和奥巴马总统一样倾向自由贸易。但没有人试图掩盖他并不是贸易专家这一事实，而贸易代表办公室的主要职务也都被曾在国会贸易委员会任职的工作人员所担任。从国会历史及特征来看，柯克大使的主要官员并不支持自由贸易。

          即使总统可能希望通过新的国际协定支持自由贸易发展，他既没有权利也没有官员推动这一使命。Bercera议员的判断是正确的，奥巴马政府至今尚未制定新的贸易政策。没有国会支持和授权，他也不可能制定新政策。

         美国最重要的贸易官员可能不是贸易代表，而是主管进口事务的商务部助理部长。担任这一职务的官员决定是否展开反倾销、反补贴调查及调查结果。他签署调查决定，包括反倾销、反补贴税率。

         至2010年6月，即奥巴马总统就职18个月后，总统仍没有任命这一重要而敏感的政策决定职务。布什任命的官员担任执行助理部长一职，因此该办公室仍然延续布什政府政策。如果说美国商务部进口事务办公室制定贸易政策，那么这一政策是布什总统、而非奥巴马总统制定的。

          本文第一部分提到，传统印象中，共和党人支持自由贸易、民主党人多为贸易保护主义者。但是是布什总统的助理商务部部长决定对非市场经济中国展开反补贴调查，以增强贸易限制。这一决定确定了贸易政策的重要组成部分，但是并不是行政部门主动提出的。商业团体递交申请书要求对中国铜版纸展开反补贴调查。行政部门面临是否展开调查的抉择。就商业团体的决定做出反应可被视为贸易政策，但更多出于偶然。

         一旦司法程序认定对非市场经济体展开反补贴调查合法，奥巴马政府就不能采取其他行动。同时，他也没有任命助理贸易部长。

         主管国际贸易委员会的法律规定该委员会由民主党和共和党各派3人共6人担任委员，任期9年。委员由总统提名，必须经参议院审核批准。很多委员曾在国会贸易委员会任职。参议院的审核过程常常是贸易政策的辩论会，但是一旦他们得到任命，这些辩论将不再影响贸易政策。总统的任命必须保持两党平衡，因此不可随意从自己的党派中选派一人担任委员。

         该委员的确也反映其党派倾向，共和党人更喜爱使用经济模型分析，而民主党人更同情产业受损的指控方。但是也不完全这样，例如担任副主席一职的民主党人Janet Nuzum比她的共和党同事更注重自由贸易的益处；现在3名共和党委员很同情本土产业。无论如何，因为委员任期长达9年，总统和国会都无法影响委员会政策，因为一旦任命，总统不能解除委员职务。

美国与中国对垒
         美国针对特定产品采取贸易补偿的程度为商业团体所左右。偶尔，政府可以制定政策，如接受针对非市场经济体展开反补贴调查的申请书，但总体来说政府没有太大发言权更不用说发挥作用了。奥巴马政府极力抵制国会要求中国货币升值的压力，其实国会可通过立法要求政府采取措施使政府没有回旋余地。

         选择很少，但并不是没有。布什政府拒绝了所有针对中国的贸易保障措施。奥巴马政府批准了一项贸易保障措施。和许多预测不同，轮胎案并没有引发更多针对中国产品的保障措施；随着这一条款即将失效，可能性也越来越小。仅从一个案件提出政府具有某一政策显然有些夸大其词，尤其结合奥巴马政府在货币政策上的坚定立场。布什总统任期内的任何一个案件都不及轮胎案件产生的政治影响。

         奥巴马政府考虑通过税收政策影响贸易政策，但主要是为了创造就业机会。新建议将向海外输送就业机会的企业征收高额税收，同时将美国的收入所得税标准衍生至海外。这些间接措施只能显示贸易政策，而非阐明贸易政策。

        但是中国却将每一项贸易调查和裁决视为针对中国的敌意政策。中国明确声称2009年11月针对美国鸡肉及汽车零部件展开的调查是针对轮胎案的报复性措施，中国认为轮胎特保案旨在挑衅中国。中国没有考虑美国国内主导、限制奥巴马总统的政治情况，相反却认为总统针对中国采取行动。至少在公开场合中国未对总统决定的细节稍加注意，例如选择恰当的宣布时间、设法不让访美的全国人大主席尴尬；策略性地设置税率使中国产品仍可出口至美国；在周末宣布决定以避免引发媒体的过分关注。然而，中国决定将这一裁决视为敌意的核心表现、美国贸易政策的集中表现。

        美国不可能拥有持久统一的贸易政策，尤其在贸易补偿领域。受调查产品及指控都是商业团体的大作，他们背后有强大的利益集团的支持，这些利益集团可在选举中提供或减少选票及竞选资金。误认为美国具有持久的贸易政策、并报复想象中的贸易政策不可能对未来产生影响。中国的贸易报复政策没有任何意义，因为它不可能影响对美贸易。报复应当是针对将来最有可能展开的贸易调查持续采取行动。

        中国应当更仔细地研究美国法律，了解宪法给予国会更多权力控制对外贸易、限制美国总统。中国应当根据美国法律在适当的时候参与谈判，只有在本国企业面临不正当竞争时才保护本国产业，且保护符合公共利益。建立在报复基础上的政策浪费政策机会、有损长期利益，尤其当被针对的国外政府无法做出回应。

         对于美方而言，总统至少应当给外界留下尊重承诺的印象。他可任命助理商务部部长。他可要求国会重新给予贸易促进权利。他可努力改变尚未得到国会批准的双边贸易协定带来的弊病。他可通过改革农业补助推动瘫痪的多哈会谈，这也有助于减少政府财政赤字。在和巴西的棉花补助争端中，或许也可向巴西棉农提供补助。这些步骤加在一起可能仍不能显示美国具有统一协调的贸易政策，但是至少可显示总统说到做到：努力实现在G-20高峰会上做出的抵制贸易保护主义的承诺、努力扩大出口、真心实意的支持商品和思想的自由流通。
 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

*This article was published in International Trade Law 360 on January 7, 2010. 中文请点击这里

On January 4 The Washington Post headlined on Page 2, with a Beijing dateline, “U.S. and China in a snowballing trade fight.” The article followed two others prominently presented with similar messages on January 1 and 3, one bannered with the same wintry theme (“U.S.-China relations set for chill, experts say”). The Washington Post is not accustomed to covering international trade, let alone with major articles. Meanwhile, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman was anticipating and endorsing in The New York Times on New Year’s Eve more trade remedy actions against China.

Trade remedy petitions are not prepared overnight. Nor are they, at least in the United States, the products of coordinated policy. Companies and industries decide that they are facing unfair international competition and that they could benefit from a trade action. Such decisions are not reached easily because trade actions are expensive and take a lot of time and attention. Whereas steel companies may orchestrate petitions because they may bring complaints about different products they make, their actions are independent of the manufacturers of non-steel products. Hence, the perception of a coordinated attack on Chinese goods is understandable (it requires only several petitions close in proximity on the calendar), but it does not correspond to a national trade policy.

Contributing to the perception of a coordinated attack on Chinese goods are the results of petitions. Most, but not all, result in affirmative determinations from both the Department of Commerce (“Commerce”) and the International Trade Commission (“ITC”) and the imposition of duties. A constant anti-China roar from Congress contributes. Nonetheless, the process is anchored in the independent initiatives of the American private sector, not in the coordination of the government.

China’s initiation of trade investigations now projects a reflection of the American process, but with insufficient transparency to be entirely persuasive that the new wave is without political motive. China’s Ministry of Commerce (“MOFCOM”) says it is receiving petitions from private enterprises and trade associations, is analyzing them and deciding whether to initiate investigations, exactly like the process in the United States. However, MOFCOM announces the filing of a petition only upon the initiation of an investigation. Some Chinese lawyers say these petitions may be the product of MOFCOM itself, and that their dating is unreliable. Because MOFCOM does not reveal the existence of the petition until it decides whether to investigate, there is no way to know. However, in the United States, Commerce must initiate an investigation within twenty days of the filing of a petition, which is a public document upon filing, Commerce cannot schedule initiations of investigations for political purpose. By contrast, MOFCOM retains complete control of its schedule and therefore can initiate investigations according to a political calendar.

American officials are talking about “inevitable” and “normal” conflicts in a growing trade relationship. China has a different view. It sees nothing inevitable or normal in the cases being brought against its goods, even though the United States has not been as aggressive in challenging Chinese exports as have been the European Union and India. Nor does it accept the results. One of the Washington Post articles, for example, was headlined, “China denounces U.S. trade ruling on steel pipes,” and Chinese Ambassador to the United States Zhou Wenzhong called the tires safeguard signed by President Obama in September “a very dangerous precedent.”

Tit For Tat

Were there “tit for tat” in this story, it would be almost entirely in the “tat.” The United States is doing what it has always done, initiating countervailing duty and antidumping investigations on virtually every petition Commerce receives. Commerce is acting as it has always acted, protecting U.S. industries by giving them the benefit of almost every doubt and zealously defending the indefensible, such as the practice of zeroing that has been struck down repeatedly by the WTO.

Commerce has been neither diplomatic nor delicate in its treatment of China. In published determinations it has accused Chinese officials of deceptive practices and misinformation. It has ignored expert testimony. It has cancelled verifications based on suspicions. It has refused to listen to government witnesses. China has ample reason to be distressed by Commerce conduct.

Notwithstanding its experience, China has complained little, if at all, about Commerce’s brass-knuckles treatment. There have been no official protests and no reports of unofficial complaints. The Chinese Government has not challenged Commerce’s conduct and determinations in U.S. courts. Conspicuously, China has reserved its public protest for denunciation of President Obama, and of the ITC, where it has declined to appear.

The President and the ITC, unlike Commerce, have not displayed animus toward China. In the tires safeguard, discussed in earlier postings on this blog, the President adhered closely to the terms of the accession protocol China had signed while fashioning a measure of relief designed to disadvantage Chinese exports without putting them out of business. Chinese commentators have suggested that Democrats, faithful to trade unions, are more protectionist than Republicans, but the ITC, with three Republican commissioners, has been consistently unanimous in its conclusions about injury caused by Chinese imports.

Chinese complaints, thus, do not seem aimed at changing results. They have not changed the course of U.S. actions, nor could they, inasmuch as the petitions do not arise from any particular policy except Commerce’s likely findings supporting petitioners.

The “tat” for the continuing American trade actions seems more apparent. Instead of contesting each trade action within the rules and laws, China has opted to take its own initiatives. Although they are not necessarily linked to American actions, it appears that China wants them interpreted this way. It was not possible, for example, for retaliatory petitions to have been readied within forty-eight hours of the President’s safeguard decision, yet Chinese statements frequently invoke the tire duties as a starting point for apparent retaliation.

Ariana Eunjung Cha linked the tires safeguard directly to Chinese reactions in The Washington Post. First she said that the safeguard “struck an emotional nerve.” She reported, “On Internet bulletin boards, public sentiment about the United States turned ugly.” Then she reported on the Chinese Ambassador’s warning that the safeguard is a “dangerous precedent,” followed by, “Two days later, China accused the United States of predatorily ‘dumping’ chicken products and auto parts into the Chinese market and warned that it could impose its own tariffs.” “Then,” she added, “in October, China made good on that threat by hitting the United States with duties of as much as 36 percent on certain nylon exports.”

With Chinese proceedings less than transparent, it is possible that the Chinese investigations were retaliatory. Ms. Cha’s subsequent statement, however, does not follow: “On Nov. 4 and 5, the United States went on the offensive again – slapping anti-dumping duties on Chinese-made steel pipe and launching two more probes of Chinese imports.” Breathlessly, now with the accumulating evidence of tit-for-tat, she adds, “Barely 24 hours later, the Chinese announced they had opened an investigation into U.S.-made passenger cars.”

The United States is not capable of the tit-for-tat this imagined trade war requires, if for no other reason than it does not control the timing and subject matter of petitions. The ITC does not have the capacity to orchestrate hearing and determination dates according to actions in China. Nor have all the ITC determinations been affirmative, and in the one instance where Chinese interests (but not the Chinese government) have challenged the legality of agency actions, the Court of International Trade handed them a partial victory as discussed in an earlier posting on this blog.

China, by contrast with the United States, may be capable of retaliatory actions, although such capability ought not be exaggerated. Bureaucracies share the same infirmities everywhere. They all move slowly, and they all have difficulty with deadlines. There is surely more coincidence than conspiracy in the timing of apparently reciprocal actions, although retaliation is not impossible.

There is, in the telling, nonetheless encouragement. Commerce has been consistent in rewarding U.S. petitioners. Congress has incited petitions. Professor Krugman, generally supportive of free trade, has declared protectionism justified, even warranted. Seen from Beijing, this apparent pattern could be seen as a policy requiring response.

The Tires Trigger And Chinese Conduct

Since accession to the WTO, China has been participating in trade disputes according to the rules, but less than fully. Unlike other countries, China is not appearing before the ITC. It is not appealing adverse agency determinations in U.S. courts. It is not pursuing administrative reviews of countervailing duty orders, when final duties are determined and set for collection. It is not even answering questionnaires in administrative reviews in support of its own companies. Instead, China is counting on the WTO for trade vindication, a strategic choice almost certain to disappoint.
The prevailing excuse for China’s incomplete commitment to the legal process, and its rising anger over American actions, continues to be President Obama’s safeguard decision. The complaint focuses on the proposition that China “did nothing wrong.” The safeguard exception in the WTO, however, expressly requires that nothing wrong be done. It exists strictly as a response to an unexpected and disruptive surge in imports.

China’s handling of the safeguard, like its handling of some of the other trade disputes, has displayed little strategic thinking. China did not present President Obama with a cogent legal argument as to why no duties should have been imposed on Chinese commercial tires, that there was no industry adjustment plan and, therefore, no remedy could serve the law’s object and purpose. Instead, China argued that the President, a Democrat elected with union support, should respect the decision of U.S. industry to offshore jobs to China.

China’s reaction to the ITC steel pipes decision has a similarly tone-deaf political character. Steven Mufson reported on New Year’s Day in The Washington Post, “China’s Ministry of Commerce said that China was ‘strongly dissatisfied’ with the U.S. International Trade Commission’s Wednesday ruling that Chinese subsidized imports had harmed or threaten to harm U.S. steel pipe manufacturers . . . The Commerce Ministry said that the ITC’s ruling was ‘wrong. . .’” Yet, MOFCOM did not present its case to the ITC. Commissioner Lane, extraordinarily, told the lead counsel for the Chinese industry during a public hearing that she did not think he was answering her questions and insisted on directing questions to the second chair.

China’s unhappiness, then, with U.S. trade actions may be the legitimate result of a pattern of petitions and decisions, but the only event deviant from the past has been the one safeguard action. It has proven not to be the “precedent” of which the Chinese Ambassador warned. No other safeguard action has been brought, even though the core injury complaint against steel pipes was about a surge.

The Bigger Picture

China is participating just enough in trade disputes arising in the United States to be informed and to complain, but not enough to prevail. Respondents to trade remedy petitions in the United States hope, but do not expect, to prevail at the ITC. They have little hope at Commerce except to build a record for appeal. Respondents, therefore, who do not appear at the ITC and do not appeal Commerce determinations do not expect ever to prevail. China’s choice of partial participation must be for some other reason.

China’s reasons may be detectable in the countervailing duty petition against U.S. automobiles, discussed in an earlier posting on this blog. The trade issue in the petition is that the U.S. industry is at least as much the beneficiary of state support as any Chinese industry, such that there is no reason for the United States to persist in treating China as a non-market economy. The grander strategic issue appears to be in the petition that the U.S. automobile industry, like the United States more generally, is in decline, whereas the Chinese industry, and China more generally, are ascending.

Trade disputes, as seen in the automobile petition, are expressions of China’s greater vision, as outlets for China to assert itself and to take on the United States as no other countries have been willing to do. As long as the United States continues business as usual, with agencies favoring domestic producers against Chinese imports, Chinese frustration will grow. Although a better answer, if China were focused on free and fair trade, would be to test the legal system, so far China prefers, apparently, to use trade as a soapbox for a bigger message.

Should China and the United States persist on these paths, the media will persist in seeing a trade war, reading into calendar coincidences strategic conspiracies. It may be the read China wants, and Congress might want it as well. The deteriorating atmosphere may then impact other critical bilateral and global issues. Consequently, it is important for China and the United States to pull back and think strategically together. Otherwise, toxic trade could pollute everything that concerns them.
 

        1月4日《华盛顿邮报》在第2版刊登了题为《美国和中国 打雪仗似的贸易战》的文章。此前，该报还于1月1日和3日刊登了类似文章，其中一篇使用了同样寒冷的标题（《专家说美中关系将转冷》）。《华盛顿邮报》不习惯于刊登报道国际贸易的文章，更不用说在显著位置刊登此类文章。与此同时，元旦前夕，诺贝尔奖获得者、经济学家保罗•克鲁格曼在《纽约时报》刊文赞同对中国采取更多贸易救济行动。

        贸易救济申请不是一夜间就可准备好的。至少在美国，它们也不是协调政策的产物。而是企业和行业认定它们面临不公平的国际竞争，它们可受益于贸易行动。这种决定不容易达到，因为贸易行动是昂贵的，需要很多时间和精力准备。钢铁公司可能协调行动递交申请，因为他们可就不同产品协调行动，但是这与其他产品的制造商的调查申请无关。因此，认为中国商品受到协调攻击的想法可以理解（它仅需要几乎同时递交几个申请），但这些行动与美国国家贸易政策无关。

        调查结果更助长了中国产品受协调攻击的看法。美国商务部和国际贸易委员会的大多数、并非所有的裁定导致中国产品面临惩罚性关税。但是，调查进程扎根于美国企业的、独立的推动作用，而非政府协调的结果。

        中国启动的贸易调查似乎是美国行动的反射，但因为缺乏足够的透明度，很难说中国掀起的新浪潮没有政治动机。中国商务部称它接受民营企业和协会申请、分析这一申请、然后决定是否展开调查，和美国的过程完全一样。然而，中国商务部在发起调查时才宣布接到调查申请。一些中国律师说这些申请可能是中国商务部自身产品，申请递交日期也不可靠。由于中国商务部在决定展开调查前不透露申请书的存在，因此没有办法获悉。然而在美国，美国商务部在申请书递交后20天内必须发起调查，申请书从递交日起也成为公开文件。美国商务部不能根据政治目的安排调查进程。相比之下，中国商务部保留了对日程的主导权，因此可以根据政治目的安排调查日程。

        美国官员谈论，成长中的贸易关系必将包括“不可避免”和“正常”冲突。中国有不同的看法。虽然美国不像欧盟和印度那么对中国出口品咄咄逼人，但是中国认为对中国产品展开的调查中没有“不可避免”和“正常”冲突之分。中国也不接受调查结果。《华盛顿邮报》的一篇文章的标题是《中国谴责美国对钢管行业的裁决》。中国驻美大使周文重称奥巴马总统去年9月批准的轮胎特保行动是“非常危险的先例。”

针锋相对

        “针锋相对”是否存在取决于“针”。美国一如既往地行动，对美国商务部接到的几乎每一份反补贴、反倾销申请书发起调查。美国商务部也是一如既往地捍卫美国产业，热情帮助它们捍卫站不住脚的论据，如世贸组织已经反复否决了的归零法。

        美国商务部对中国既没有使用外交辞令、也没有微妙处理。在发布的裁决中，它指责中方官员的欺诈行为、提供错误信息；美国商务部漠视专家证词；它在怀疑的基础上取消核查；它拒绝政府证人作证。中国有充分的理由对美国商务部的行为感到痛心。

        尽管面临这些待遇，中国不曾抱怨美国商务部的做法。既没有官方抗议也没有非正式投诉。中国政府也没有在美国法院反对美国商务部的行为和裁决。引人注目的是，中国却在公开场合抗议奥巴马总统以及美国国际贸易委员会的决定，虽然中国拒绝参加国际贸易委员会调查。

        总统和国际贸易委员会与美国商务部不同，并没有对中国显示敌意。在轮胎特保案中，总统严格按照中国入世议定书条款、制定了将限制中国出口品但不将它们排除在美国市场之外的贸易保障措施。中国评论家认为，忠于工会的民主党人比共和党人更倾向于贸易保护主义，但是国际贸易委员会五位委员中有三位是共和党人，这三位委员一直、一致认定中国出口品对美国产业造成损害。

        因此，中国的投诉似乎不是为了改变结果。它们没有改变美国的行动。它们也不可能，因为调查申请愿不是政策支持的结果，或仅仅来自美国商务部的裁决可能支持调查申请。

        美国的贸易行动将持续。中国没有利用法律对每一项进行斗争，相反决定自己采取行动。虽然中国的行动不一定与美国的行动相关，但中国似乎希望外界这样解释。例如，报复性调查申请不可能在奥巴马总统宣布保障措施前48小时准备完毕，但是中国的新闻发言常常援引轮胎案作为报复的出发点。

        《华盛顿邮报》记者Ariana Eunjung Cha直接把中国的报复行动和轮胎案联系在一起。她首先提到轮胎特保案“撞上了中国的情感神经。”她接着报道说“在互联网电子公告板上，公众对美国的情绪愈演愈烈、愈演愈糟。”接着她引用中国驻美国大使的警告说特保行动是一个“危险的先例”。“两天后中国指责美国掠夺性地在中国市场‘倾销’鸡肉产品和汽车零部件，并警告说中国也可以征收关税”。她补充说，“在十月中国就实现了这一威胁，向美国尼龙征收高达百分之36的惩罚性关税。”

        由于中国的调查过程不太透明，有可能中国的调查是报复性行为。Cha女士随后评论说：“11月4和5日，美方再次发动攻势，向中国钢管征收反倾销税，同时对另两项中国产品展开调查。”双方都毫不松气，越来越多的证据也证明现在双方都是针锋相对地报复对方，“不到24小时，中国宣布开始对美国轿车展开调查。”

        美国没有能力参与这想象中的针锋相对的贸易战，其他原因撇开不谈，美方无法控制调查时间和调查申请主题。美国国际贸易委员会没有能力根据中国的行动左右听证会和裁决发布日期。也不是所有国际贸易委员会的裁决都不利于中国。我们在前文中提到中国代表（但不是中国政府）在美国国际贸易法庭质疑美国政府机构的行动，法院裁决中方获得部分胜利。

        与美国相反，中国有能力采取报复行动，虽然这一能力不应该被夸大。世界各地的官僚都有一个相同的毛病。他们都行动缓慢，对截止日期感到头疼。虽然报复并非不可能存在，但是巧合比阴谋显然更有可能。

        当然官方鼓励也存在。美国商务部以裁决奖励美国申请方。国会煽动申请。一般支持自由贸易的克鲁格曼教授也宣称贸易保护合理，甚至必要。从北京来看，这些情况应被视为需要应对的政策。
轮胎案导火线和中方行为

        自加入世界贸易组织以来，中国开始、但没有完全根据规则参与贸易争端。与其他国家不同，中国不参与美国国际贸易委员会调查。也没有在美国法院上诉政府机构发布的不利裁决。中国不参加反补贴行政复审，而行政复审决定最后被征收的税率。中国政府甚至不回答可支持本国公司的行政复议调查问卷。相反，中国指望通过世贸组织解决贸易争端，这是一个几乎注定令人失望选择。

        中国不完整地使用法律进程、对美方行动日益增长的愤怒的借口仍然是奥巴马总统批准特保行动。中国抱怨的重点是她“没有做错任何事”。但是世界贸易组织的保障条款明确规定可对未犯错的被调查国采取行动。保障条款针对出乎意料、破坏性进口激增。

        中国处理特保案及其他贸易争端都显示出她没有太多战略思想。中国没有给予奥巴马总统令人信服的理由说明为什么不应当对中国商业轮胎征收惩罚性关税，也没有提供产业调整计划；因此，中方没有证明没有补救措施可以实现法律的目的和宗旨。相反，中国认为受工会支持当选的民主党总统应尊重美国产业的决定，向中国输送就业机会。

        中国对美国国际贸易委员会钢管案裁决的反应也显示了中国政治不敏感。元旦，《华盛顿邮报》刊登了史蒂芬•穆夫森的报道，“中国商务部声明中国对美国国际贸易委员会的反补贴产业损害裁决表示强烈不满，中国商务部认为美国国际贸易委员会的裁决是错误的”。然而，中国商务部没有很好地参与美国国际贸易委员会调查。国际贸易委员会委员Lane在听证会上告诉中方首席律师她认为这位律师没有回答她的问题，并让第二位律师回答问题。

        中国的不满是对美国贸易行动的正常反应，但只有轮胎特保案是唯一没有先例的案件。它不是中国大使警告的“先例”。因为还没有其他保障措施申请，虽然钢管案的核心投诉是进口大幅上升。

纵观全局

        中国参与在美国发生的贸易争端，只能帮助她获悉、宣泄，但是不能使她占上风。应诉方一般希望在美国国际贸易委员会获胜，但不抱很大期待。他们在美国商务部调查中获胜的希望渺茫，只为上诉做好案件材料准备。因此，不参与美国国际贸易委员会调查、且未对美国商务部裁决提出上诉的应诉方永远没希望占上风。中国选择部分参与必定有其他原因。

        要求对美国汽车展开反补贴调查的申请可显示中国的理由。申请书认为美国汽车产业和中方任一产业一样，接受至少相当的国家支持，因此美国没有理由坚持视中国为非市场经济。调查申请显示更重大的战略问题是美国汽车业和美国整体一样呈下降趋势，而中国产业以及中国整体呈上升趋势。

        包括汽车案在内的贸易争端是中国视野的表现，是中国表现自己权威的渠道，并对美国采取其他国家不愿采取的行动。如果美国照旧行事，政府机构偏袒国内生产商，中国的不满将增长。虽然更好的解决方法是中国利用法律制度捍卫自由和公平贸易，但到目前为止中国明显喜欢使用贸易作为释放信号的肥皂泡。

        如果中美继续在这些道路上前进，媒体将看到持续的贸易战、把巧合解读为战略阴谋。这可能是中国希望看到的解读，美国国会可能也需要这一解读。但日益恶化的气氛可影响其他重要双边和全球问题。因此，中美都应当退一步、采取战略性思考。否则，有毒贸易可能会污染她们关心的一切。

（翻译：朱晶）

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

President Obama, on September 11, announced that the United States would restrict imports of Chinese commercial, low-cost tires.  This action was foreseeable and foreseen (for example this blog foresaw this action in articles titled Attack On China Rolls On New Tires and  Consultations To Settle The Tires Dispute: Too Little Too Late?).  President Obama committed to additional tariffs of 35-30-25 percent stepped down over three years; the United States International Trade Commission had recommended 55-45-35 percent over three years. Many analysts called the ITC’s recommendation prohibitive; the Obama rates, according to United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk, were derived from an economic model designed to reduce but not prohibit Chinese tires in the U.S. market.  The victorious United Steelworkers predicted getting their lost jobs back; most analysts predicted that exports from other countries, not domestic production, would fill in the missing Chinese tires.

Within twenty-four hours, China announced trade remedy investigations into chicken and automobile parts from the United States.  Observers were quick to label the announcement as “retaliation” (Inside U.S. Trade headline: CHINA RESPONDS TO TIRES SAFEGUARD WITH NEW AD INVESTIGATIONS), which China denied.  China announced a WTO appeal of an adverse decision on the sale and distribution of visual works and music download services almost simultaneously, and a WTO challenge to the tires safeguard decision within days.

Dire predictions, and accusations directed at President Obama, followed quickly.  President Obama was accused of breaking the word he gave, and the undertaking of world leaders that he had solicited, at the last meeting of the G-20, to avoid any acts of trade protectionism in the midst of a global recession.  He was accused of inconsiderate timing, making his announcement on 9/11, a day that ironically had brought the world together, and less than two weeks before the next G-20 in Pittsburgh, where he would be the host.  China complained, expressly, that President Obama seemed prepared to trade off 5000 American jobs for 100,000 Chinese, seeking a superior moral ground.  Trade analysts rushed to predict a wave of safeguard actions against Chinese products.  After all, if an apparently weak claim could succeed with the Obama Administration, surely stronger claims could prevail, and the standards for relief based on a safeguard action are much lower than for dumping and countervailing duty petitions.

The safeguard action did not require any Chinese violations of any trade rules, and there were no formal allegations of dumping or subsidies in the tires case.  Had there been any, the law required them to be disregarded in the decision process.  Nonetheless, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard engaged in vitriolic denunciations of Chinese trade practices before, during, and after the President’s decision.  He quickly seized leadership in new petitions that did contain such allegations.  The Obama Administration said nothing publicly to recognize the difference between the decision on tires and findings of subsidies or dumping, thereby possibly reinforcing an apparent Chinese impression that the proceedings were unfair and ill-timed for global economic recovery.  Gerard’s statements (and similar statements from a Union witness, the Alliance of American Manufacturing, at the Trade Policy Committee hearing), seem intended, in their disregard for the law and in their tone, to damage Chinese-U.S. relations.  As they were, in the tires case, outside the law, the Obama Administration may need to be sensitive to an overtly warm embrace of the unions.

Did President Obama start a trade war?  Is China retaliating?  Will the G-20 countries conclude that the U.S. is not committed to free trade, and will they react by seeking to protect their own domestic markets?  Will this trade trigger reverse the promising signs of global recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s?

There are no simple answers to these disturbing questions, but it is possible to address some of them without hysteria.  There is here much more than may seem apparent, and also a bit less.

The Decision On Tires

All trade disputes begin with domestic politics.  The tires dispute began with Candidate Obama’s promises to give meaning to the special China safeguard and to insist upon Chinese adherence to trade laws and agreements, and the critical support he received from the trade unions in his run for the presidency.  It was sustained by a continuing anti-Chinese sentiment in Congress, where various bills alleging currency manipulation and other unfair trade sins are introduced almost routinely.  And it was advanced by the analytical conclusion of four of the six Commissioners of the International Trade Commission, led by a Chairwoman previously on the staff of the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who found that an increase in Chinese tire imports had disrupted the U.S. market and injured the U.S. industry.  The Democratic Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, coincidentally but instrumentally, is essential to the President in his efforts to reform health care, his highest priority.

The President’s rationale is uncomplicated.  China agreed to the special safeguard.  Its requirements were met, at least insofar as the case was presented to the International Trade Commission, the United States Trade Representative, and the Trade Policy Committee.  Therefore, it was right and reasonable to apply the law.

There is perhaps another explanation.  The gathered political forces made a presidential refusal to act in the tires case impossible.  The trade unions and the Democratic Congress would have accused President Obama of representing continuity with the Bush Administration, not the change he had promised.  He would have been seen to condone the offshoring of jobs, which the Chinese interests in the case brazenly emphasized as the core of their defense.  He would have been seen as “soft” on China.  Most important of all, he would have had no subsequent credibility with Congress or a probable majority of Americans on trade.  He would never have been able to advance a free trade agenda.  Indeed, he likely would never have been granted the trade negotiation authority that, at present, he does not have but needs.

The Timing

The law, Section 421 et seq. of the Trade Agreements Act of 1974 , as amended, required presidential action by September 17.  The President could have let the date slip inasmuch as there is nothing in the law to discipline him had he done so.  However, President Obama is particularly respectful of the law, and he would have been under unwelcome political pressure had he not acted when the statute required.

The President probably did not want to act while National People’s Congress Chairman Wu Bangguo was in the United States, which China may have interpreted as insulting.  The Chairman, after all, seems to have raised the issue in meetings with the President, Vice President, and congressional leaders during a visit of more than ten days, exactly during the initial window when the recommendation from the Trade Policy Committee and the Trade Representative had reached the President’s desk.

With the September 17 deadline preceding the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh (beginning exactly one week later) the President surely wanted as much distance as possible between his announcement and the Summit.  At the Summit he wanted to discuss the world’s financial institutions, the economic crisis, climate change.  He did not want a diversion into a trade war.
Wu Bangguo left for China from Washington on Friday morning, September 11.  The President announced his decision that afternoon, which was already the weekend in China.  It was the end of the U.S. news cycle for the week.  It was as long before the Summit as possible once Wu Bangguo had left, and it met the statutory deadline.  It happened to be 9/11, but otherwise there could not have been politically or diplomatically a better time.

The “Retaliation”

China’s nearly simultaneous announcement of antidumping and countervailing investigations could not have been retaliatory in any normal meaning of that term.  China’s bureaucracy, like the bureaucracy in any major country, inevitably is large and slow.  It could not have arranged to announce antidumping and countervailing investigations on less than twenty-four hours notice.  The investigations had to have been planned long before the President’s decision was known.

The Chinese announcement, not the investigations themselves, may have been intended to appear retaliatory, but it, too, had to have been planned.  It is probable, therefore, that the President had told Chinese officials during consultations (see Consultations To Settle The Tires Dispute: Too Little Too Late?) when he would make his announcement so that they could prepare.  It may even have been agreed that the Chinese would announce the antidumping and countervailing investigations effectively in conjunction with the President’s announcement, so that both sides could posture for their publics but also sweep the dispute away a couple of weeks before the G-20 Summit.

That China has a growing agenda of trade grievances with the United States is not surprising, particularly as a wave of trade remedy petitions has begun to flood agencies in the United States and other countries against Chinese products.  As much as China pledges to encourage more domestic consumerism and to reduce reliance on exports (consistent with American requests in the G-20 framework), such a change will not come about quickly.  China needs foreign markets to remain open to its products, just as do other countries.  China is appropriately aggrieved by the drive to close or limit markets for its goods.

A dispute over chicken has been festering between China and the United States for a long time.  China’s domestic industry in auto parts has been troubled, especially in the recession.  Both have been likely sources of Chinese trade actions against foreign imports.  The timing for these investigations may not have been entirely coincidental, but it would also appear to have been less calculated and calculating than to be called “retaliation.”

Within a week of these “retaliatory” Chinese actions, three more antidumping and countervailing duty petitions were filed in Washington against Chinese products.  No one suggested that these petitions were part of a new trade war, or were retaliatory.  Instead, they were understood to be part of the normal course of trade relations between China and the United States, where China is still a major producer of goods that Americans want to buy and American manufacturers and, more significantly it seems, American trade unions, want to keep out.  Notwithstanding the grand objectives of the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, to make China more a consumer society and less export-driven, while making Americans greater savers with a reduced compunction to buy, the life of the two countries goes on, and with it the rhythm of American trade complaints against Chinese products.

The Maturing Of China

Although life goes on, there are unmistakable changes, precipitated in part by the global recession, but also by the maturing of China in the international system.  China made significant sacrifices to join the WTO, including negotiating compromises that created exposure to the special safeguard that produced President Obama’s tires decision.  China has been exposed to the WTO disciplines, and nine Chinese actions have been challenged in cases filed in the WTO against Chinese practices. However, China during the last twelve months alone has launched four cases against others.  China has begun to recognize the WTO not only as a forum where it might be brought to judgment, but also one where it may challenge others.

China’s growing engagement in the WTO is part of its growing engagement more generally, whether in the G-8 or the G-5, the G-20 or the International Monetary Fund.  China is growing into a new role, still a developing country, but one with a voice to be heard.  Rather than characterize China’s use of trade laws as “retaliation,” these actions more properly can be seen as maturation, China’s willingness, ability, even determination to act like other countries participating at comparable levels in the world’s trading system.

China is now neither first nor last in the invocation of trade remedies and dispute settlement.  It is one among few, but it is more inside the norms of international organizations than out.

These developments signal more than mere maturation.  They also signal that China accepts the legitimacy of international institutions, and their disciplines.  China accepts full international citizenship, claiming its rights as well as its responsibilities.  Instead of finding fault or danger or risk when China exercises these rights, it is probably wiser to find relief as China integrates into the global economy and polity.  It was not so very long ago when China was an effective member of neither.

The Next Road For Tires

There is no forum other than the WTO where China can appeal the Section 421 safeguard decision.  Nonetheless, China is likely to be disappointed there.  Were it to win, it would not be a victory that could be finalized soon enough to impact the tires trade (especially as all WTO relief is prospective), nor to head off other safeguard actions much before the expiration of Section 421 at the end of 2012.  China, therefore, should not permit the safeguard actions to create an illusion about the WTO, nor exaggerated expectations.

The tires decision may also have limited effect encouraging other safeguard actions.  It took seven months from the filing of the petition to reach presidential decision, which means that “full” relief (three years) requires beginning a case with at least 43 months left in the statute.  It is no longer possible to bring any safeguard action under this provision of the law and obtain a result that could yield even three years of relief, as only 39 months of legal authority remain.  With every passing day, the potential length of time for relief diminishes because of the law’s mandatory expiration.

It would be more prudent and effective for Chinese interests to continue pressing for reconsideration in the White House, where the statute directs everyone after a year.  Were the first year of relief to produce American jobs, a continuing challenge to the President’s decision likely would be futile, but should the predictions of the economists engaged by the Chinese side prove correct, such that safeguard relief does little or nothing for American jobs, the President might be willing to rethink, just as President Bush was forced to do after two years of steel safeguards.  In the latter, even as the President was driven to give up the relief, there was a significant recovery in the domestic industry.  Without any recovery in the tires industry, the likely scenario, the President would be that much less likely to continue the relief in a form harmful to China.
 

奥巴马总统于9月11日宣布美国将限制中国产商用低价轮胎出口至美国。这一决定已被广为预见、并不出人意料（如本博客文章Attack On China Rolls On New Tires and Consultations To Settle The Tires Dispute: Too Little Too Late?)。奥巴马总统决定在未来三年内分别向中国轮胎征收百分之三十五、三十和二十五的额外税率，美国国际贸易委员会此前则建议追加百分之五十五、四十五和三十五的税率。许多分析员都认为美国国际贸易委员会的建议将把中国产品排除在美国市场之外。根据美国贸易谈判代表柯克，奥巴马总统的方案建立在一个将降低但不排除中国轮胎出口到美国的经济模型之上。胜利的美国钢铁工人联合会预计将赢回失去的就业机会，然而大多数分析家认为其他国家生产的轮胎将填补中国轮胎原先占有的市场份额，而非美国本土生产的轮胎。

不到24小时，中国就宣布对美国禽类产品和汽车零部件展开贸易救济调查。观察家立即把这一声明贴上“报复”的标签（《美国贸易内幕》刊登了题为《中国以反倾销调查回应轮胎特保案》的文章），中国政府予以否认。几乎同时，中国宣布将在世贸组织上诉不利于中国的、有关视听产品下载服务销售和分销的裁决，稍候又向世贸组织上诉轮胎特保案裁决。

耸人听闻的预测以及针对奥巴马总统的指责随即而来。奥巴马总统面临违背承诺的指责，违背在他推动下、各国首脑在上届G-20会议上做出的、为避免全球经济衰退而回避贸易保护行动的承诺。他还面临宣布这一决定时机不对的指责，在9/11这一把全世界团结在一起的日子宣布裁决、在匹兹堡G-20首脑会议即将举行之际，更何况美国还是东道国。中国公开抱怨奥巴马总统准备用十万个中国就业机会换取五千个美国工作，争取道德制高点。贸易专家急忙预测一系列针对中国产品的保障案件将立即到来。总而言之，如果一个软弱无力的指控能得到奥巴马政府的支持，那么更强有力的指控一定将赢得胜利。而且采取保障救济的标准比反倾销、反补贴调查低得多。

在贸易保障调查中不需要证明中方违背了贸易规则，在本案中没有任何反补贴或反倾销指控。即使有不正当贸易行为，法律规定在裁决时无须考虑这些行为。但是，美国钢铁工人联合会主席Leo Gerard在总统宣布决定前后公开诋毁中国的贸易行为，他还立马带头在新的申诉中包括这些指控。奥巴马政府没有公开评论轮胎特保案决定与反倾销、反补贴裁决之间的差别，因此更强化了中方认为这一裁决不公且时机不当的印象。Gerard的评论（以及钢铁工人联合会证人和美国制造业联盟在贸易政策委员会听证会上的发言）显示他们置法律于不顾、破坏中美关系。观察他们在轮胎案中的表现，奥巴马政府应注意工会热情的拥抱。

奥巴马总统真的展开一场新的贸易战吗？中国是否采取了报复行动？G-20成员国是否得出美国并不坚信自由贸易的结论，并采取行动保护本国市场呢？这一案件是否会影响刚刚开始的全球经济复苏、使自1930年代以来最严重的经济危机又走下坡路呢？

这些令人不安的问题并没有简单答案，但是不用歇斯特里就可回答其中一些问题。有些并不显而易见，有些却明白无误。

轮胎案裁决

所有的贸易纠纷都源自国内政治。轮胎案起源于奥巴马在竞选美国总统时承诺将赋予针对中国产品的特保条款意义、督促中国遵守贸易法及协定，以及工会支持为他赢得选举起的关键性作用。同时，国会内的反华情绪也起到一定作用，国会指控中国操纵汇率及采取其他不正当贸易行为似乎已成为惯例。美国国际贸易委员会六位委员中、包括主席在内四位委员的研究结论起到了推波助澜作用，这位主席曾为参议员金融委员会民主党主席的工作人员。这四位委员认定中国轮胎出口增长已经扰乱美国市场、使美国产业受损。参议员金融委员会的这位民主党主席恰好在总统的医疗改革中起关键作用，而医疗改革是总统的首要任务。

总统的逻辑并不复杂。中国接受了特殊保障条款。条款规定的要求已经达到，至少这一案件已由国际贸易委员会、美国贸易代表办公室和贸易政策委员会审核。因此，实施这一法律是正确且合理的。

或许还有一种解释。种种政治力量使得总统在轮胎案中否决贸易救济行动不切实际。工会和民主党国会已经指责奥巴马总统沿用布什政府政策，而非承诺的改革。如不批准救济行动，那么奥巴马将被认为对本土工作流失漠不关心，在本案中中方抗辩的立足点就是就业这一点。他将被认为对中国太“软弱”。最重要的一点，他将失去国会乃至大多数美国民众在贸易问题上的信任。他将无法推动自由贸易。他现在没有但却需要国会授予贸易谈判的权利，如果不这么做，他将永远无法得到授权。

时机

修订后的《1974年贸易协定法案》第421条要求总统在9月17日之前采取行动。总统可以错过这一截止日期，因为法律中不包含惩罚条款。但是，奥巴马总统特别尊重法律；如果不依法行事，他将面临许多不利的政治压力。

总统或许是希望避免在全国人大常委会委员长吴邦国访美期间采取行动，因为中方可能会视此为侮辱。在十多天行程中，吴邦国委员长在与总统、副总统和国会领导会晤时多次提到轮胎案，这恰好是贸易政策委员会和美国贸易代表办公室提交的意见抵达白宫、总统可作出决定这一时间段的初期。

9月17日这一截止日期恰好在匹兹堡G-20首脑会议召开前一周，总统当然希望能尽量提前宣布。在首脑会议上，奥巴马希望讨论全球金融体系、经济危机和气候变化。他不希望将话题转至贸易战。

吴邦国于9月11日（周五）上午离开美国返回中国。总统在这天下午宣布决定，此时中国已是周末。对于美国媒体而言，这是一周新闻的尾声。同时这也是吴邦国委员离美后、距离G-20首脑会议最远的时间点，且符合美国法律规定。这一天恰好是9月11日，但是从政治、外交角度而言的最佳时机。

报复

中国几乎同时宣布对美国产品展开反补贴、反倾销调查，但这并不是报复。中国的官僚体系和其他国家的官僚体系一样，只不过更大更慢。中国不可能在不到24小时就做好准备、宣布展开调查。这些贸易调查早在总统宣布决定前就已经开始酝酿了。

中国的声明可能显得这些贸易调查是报复行径，而不是这些调查本身。所以，总统可能在中美磋商过程中（见Consultations To Settle The Tires Dispute: Too Little Too Late?一文）告诉中方他准备如此宣布，希望中方做好准备。可能美方也默许中方将于这一时间宣布展开贸易救济调查，这样双方都可尽早在G-20首脑会议召开前对国内公众有所交待。

在贸易领域，中国对美国不满的清单越列越长并不令人奇怪，尤其是当中国产品在美国和其他国家面临一波接一波的贸易救济案。虽然中国承诺鼓励国内消费、减少出口依赖（这与美国在G-20首脑会议的要求吻合），但这一变化不会很快到来。中国需要海外市场继续对中国产品敞开大门、享受和其他国家产品同等的待遇。中国对单单针对中国产品的市场限制理所当然有所不满。

中美鸡肉产品纠纷持续已久。中国国内的汽车零部件产业陷入困境，尤其是在经济衰退中。这是中国采取贸易行动的源泉。这些调查展开的时间可能并非完全巧合，但也不一定是精心策划的“报复”。

在中国宣布报复行动后短短一周内，美国企业针对中国产品递交了三份反补贴、反倾销申诉。没有人认为这些申诉是新一轮贸易战的一部分、或是报复。恰恰相反，它们被认为是中美正常贸易的一部分。中国是美国希望购买的产品的主要生产国，但是美国生产商以及（尤其是）美国工会希望把这些产品排除在美国市场之外。匹兹堡G-20首脑会议的宏伟目标包括鼓励中国向消费型经济发展、减少出口依赖，同时鼓励美国减少消费、增加储蓄，两个国家的命运在美国对中国贸易政策的抱怨声中延续。

日趋成熟的中国

虽然命运在延续，全球经济衰退以及中国的成长也带来许多变化。中国为加入世贸组织作出许多牺牲，包括谈判妥协最终导致特保条款及轮胎救济行动。中国已经多次面临世贸组织的管理，迄今为止中国因为九项贸易举动成为多个世贸案件的辩护方。同时，中国在过去一年里也向世贸组织递交了四份申诉。中国已经意识到世贸组织不仅是她面临指控的法律论坛，同时也是挑战其他国家的场所。

中国更积极地参与世贸组织活动是她积极参与国际舞台的一部分，其他场所还包括在G-8, G-5,G-20及国际货币基金组织。虽然仍为发展中国家，但是中国已经逐渐扮演新角色，是世界需要倾听的声音。与其简单地把中国使用贸易法视为“报复”，这些行动更应当被视为成熟的表现，中国愿意、有能力、甚至决心和其他国家一样行事、在同一平台参与世界贸易体系。

中国既不是第一个、也不是最后一个使用贸易救济和纠纷解决机制的国家。她是使用这一机制少数国家之一，但至少中国已经成为国际组织内的一员、而不是徘徊在组织之外。

这些发展不仅显示中国已更加成熟，同时亦显示中国已经承认国际组织的合法性并接受管理。中国已经接受国际国籍，维护自己的权利并履行自己的职责。与其寻找中国在履行职责时犯的错误、带来的危险，更明智的做法是对中国融入全球经济和政治长舒一口气。不久前，中国还不是有影响力的成员。

轮胎的另一条道路

世贸组织是中国唯一可以上诉421条款特保决定的场所。但是，在那里中国很可能会感到失望。即使中国胜诉，这一胜利也遥遥无期、无法影响轮胎贸易（更何况世贸裁决针对未来），更无法阻止在2012年底421条款失效前面临更多特保案件。因此，中国不应当允许特保行动以造成对世贸组织的错觉，更不应该夸大期望。

轮胎案的裁决可能不会激发其他特保案件。从递交申诉至总统裁决需要7个月，这说明如想寻求全面特保救济（横跨3年）应当在这一法律条款失效前43个月启动案件。现在距离这一条款失效仅剩39个月，因此已经不可能通过特保案获得全面救济。因为这一条款在2012年底失效，随着时间一天天推移，美国企业可享受救济的时间也一点点减少。

更谨慎和有效的做法是中国应当继续向白宫施压、要求重新考虑，因为这是法律规定一年后应采取的行动。如果第一年的贸易救济的确为美国带来更多就业机会，那么挑战总统的决定将毫无意义；但如果中方聘请的经济专家的预言正确——贸易救济对美国就业没有或只有极小影响，那么总统可能愿意重新考虑，就像布什总统在钢铁保障生效后两年被迫放弃这一贸易救济。在钢铁保障案中，虽然总统被迫放弃救济行动，但是国内产业已经复苏。如果轮胎产业没有恢复，最可能的情况是奥巴马总统更不可能维持这一危害中国的救济行动。 

（翻译：朱晶）
 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

中文请点击这里

Only the President can impose a restriction on imports to the United States without a finding of wrongdoing by a foreign producer or exporter. The United Steelworkers of America have asked the President, pursuant to Section 421 of the U.S. trade law (the “special safeguard” for China), to restrict the importation of low grade commercial tires. By law, the President must decide whether to grant or deny the union’s request by September 17. See Attack On China Rolls On New Tires, posted on August 13.

The safeguard law provides for consultations intended to lead to settlements of disputes arising under Section 421. It also specifies a period for consultations that, in this case, expired on August 17. Prior to August 17, some meetings of Chinese and American officials were reported, but there have been no public reports of what was discussed, nor at what level. The law calls for consultations only after the United States International Trade Commission (“ITC”) has found a harmful surge of Chinese product and has recommended a remedy, a period that began on June 18.

President Obama will make his decision after reviewing the ITC’s recommendation, the recommendation of the Trade Policy Staff Committee (“TPSC”) chaired by the United States Trade Representative ("USTR") and in this case including the Departments of State, Treasury, Labor, and Commerce, his National Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the National Economic Council, and Council of Economic Advisers. He will weigh the interests of the union, the industry, the national economy, and foreign relations with China and other trade partners.

In a safeguard process it is appropriate for parties to seek consultations with all offices of government involved. It now appears that China, albeit after the statutory deadline, has been pursuing such consultations. During the week of August 24, MOFCOM Deputy Minister Zhong Shan reportedly met with the Secretary of Commerce (Gary Locke), the National Security Council’s Senior Director for Asia (Jeffrey Bader), the Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs (Michael Froman), the Deputy United States Trade Representative (Demetrios Marantis), and the Acting Under Secretary for International Trade (Michelle O’Neill). All of these officials will have something to say to the President. It is appropriate and prudent for a senior Chinese official to have spoken with them.

The 60-day window for consultations in the statute (running from the time of the ITC’s finding of injury) is not strict. It would have been better to have had consultations at such high levels sooner (and perhaps there were, albeit unreported), but it remains important that they have been taking place.

There has been no mention of senior level consultations with the TPSC members. The USTR by law will advise the President, on behalf of the TPSC, on September 2. China should have been consulting with the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and State, in addition to Commerce and USTR itself. Maybe such consultations have taken place. None has been reported.

Even more important than the meetings themselves is the content of the meetings. Of this subject there have been no reports. China should not have been pursuing the line taken publicly, however, in the legal briefs submitted to the TPSC and at the public hearing convened by USTR on August 7. There, the Chinese side called for acceptance of the tire manufacturers’ express offshoring of jobs to China, a position amplified by two of the companies themselves, Toyo Tires and Cooper Tire and Rubber Company, in eleventh hour submissions (after remaining silent throughout the ITC proceedings in the spring and the TPSC proceedings, through the August 7 hearing, in the summer). This line ignores the President’s political debt to the unions, his political commitments to keep jobs in the United States, and his political priorities focused, at this very moment, on health care reform that requires vigorous union support. There are more creative, legally-based considerations available (see Attack On China Rolls On New Tires, posted on August 13) that would seem essential for Chinese interests to succeed.
 

            只有美国总统才可下令限制某一商品的进口，即使没有裁定国外生产商或是美国进口商做错了什么。美国工人联合会要求美国总统根据贸易法421款（针对中国的特殊贸易保障条款）限制低质商业轮胎的进口至美国。根据法律规定，总统必须在9月17日前决定批准或是拒绝工会的要求。

            贸易保障法为解决421条款下产生的纠纷提供了磋商机制。同时，它明确规定了磋商时间段，本案的截止日期是8月17日。根据媒体报道，中方官员在8月17日之前数次会晤美方官员，但是没有报道会议具体内容以及是哪一级别的会晤。法律规定只有当美国国际贸易委员会认定中国产品进口激增带来损害、且提出救济措施后，双方才可展开磋商，也就是从6月18日开始计时。

 

            奥巴马总统将在审阅国际贸易委员会以及由美国贸易代表办公室牵头、国家安全委员会、管理及预算办公室、国家经济委员会、白宫经济顾问委员会组成的贸易政策委员会（美国国务院、财政部、劳工部及商务部亦参与本案）的建议后做出决定。他将衡量工会、轮胎行业、美国经济以及与中国及其它贸易伙伴的关系。

 

            在贸易保障案件中，涉案方与各政府磋商是恰当之举。现在看来，虽然已过了截止日期，中国正积极与美方磋商。根据报道，商务部副部长钟山在8月24日这周与美国商务部部长骆家辉、国家安全委员会亚洲事务高级主任杰夫ּ贝德、国家安全事务副助理麦克尔ּ弗罗曼、贸易谈判代表办公室贸易副代表马兰蒂斯、商务部代理副部长米歇尔ּ奥尼尔。这些官员都将向总统提交建议。中方高级官员的这一行动是恰当、谨慎之举。

 

            法律规定的60天磋商期（从美国国际贸易委员会裁定损害这一天开始）并不具有限制性。如果中方在早些时候和这些高层官员磋商将更有利于中方（也许中方的确采取了行动，只是未被媒体报道而已），但这些会晤仍很重要。

 

            报道并未提到与贸易政策委员会成员的高层磋商。根据法律规定，美国贸易代表办公室将代表贸易政策委员会于9月2日向总统提交建议。除美国商务部和贸易代表办公室，中国还应与美国财政部、劳工部、国务院磋商。也许中方已经和这些部门磋商，只是没有媒体报道。

 

            比会谈更重要的是会谈内容。没有有关会谈内容的任何报道。中国应公开声明立场，而不只是在向贸易政策委员会及主持公开听证会的美国贸易代表办公室递交的法律文件中。在这些文件中，中方呼吁接受美国轮胎生产商将工作转移至中国的现实，这一论点得到两大轮胎生产商——东洋轮胎（Toyo）和Cooper轮胎橡胶厂的支持（两大生产商在国际贸易委员调查至8月7日听证会期间都保持沉默）。中方的这一战略忽略了奥巴马总统欠工会的政治债、保持在美就业机会的政治承诺、以及他当前的政治重点——医疗改革需要工会大力支持的现实。其他还有更有创意、符合法律规定的方法可帮助中方实现目标（见8月17日博客文章）。

 

（翻译：朱晶）

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

中文请点击这里

The United Steelworkers, qualifying as an “entity” “representative of an industry” under Section 201 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974, petitioned the Obama Administration in April 2009 to enact a temporary “safeguard” remedy to protect the manufacture and sale of low-grade commercial tires in the United States against a surge of imports from China. Petition Seeking Relief from Market Disruption Caused by Imports of Consumer Tires from China, Inv. No. TA-421-07, April 20, 2009.  Even though the union filed the petition without cooperation or support from any company manufacturing tires in the U.S., and safeguards exist primarily to protect productive industries, the Obama Administration is under exceptional political pressure to honor the union’s request. 

The special safeguard law for China, Section 421, expires in 2012 in accordance with China’s Protocol of Accession to the World Trade Organization.  Thereafter, China will be subject only to the same safeguard provisions as every other country. Until then, the Obama Administration will have to weigh its relations with China against domestic interests and priorities. All safeguards, uniquely among trade remedies, require presidential decisions.

The United States International Trade Commission (“ITC”) issued a report on June 18 finding “market disruption,” the statutory basis for recommending trade relief for a domestic industry under the special safeguard for China. The ITC recommended, on July 9, three years of very high but gradually reducing tariffs. Ten United States Senators then wrote President Obama endorsing the ITC recommendations.

Relying on the ITC record, a Trade Policy Staff Committee (“TPSC”) assembled for this case and comprised of the Departments of State, Commerce, Labor, and Treasury, chaired by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (“USTR”), must make its own recommendation to the President as to whether he should grant any relief to the industry and, were he to do so, how much and in what form. The final public hearing on the case, convened by the TPSC, was held in Washington, D.C. on August 7. All written submissions were due from all parties by August 11.

The statute provides expressly for settlement of disputes where market disruption has been found, but should China want to settle this dispute, it must do so by August 17. The TPSC is expected to make its recommendation to the President by September 2. In the absence of a settlement, the President must decide the question of remedy for the market disruption found by the ITC by September 17.

China’s strategy in this case has been to adopt a “Republican” political and policy position – that the market forces surrounding the choices of the companies to give up the manufacture of low-grade tires should govern, allowing thousands of jobs to move offshore to lower cost manufacturers. China’s opposition to safeguard remedies has been articulated as a preference for market forces over the employment of American workers, and for economic analysis that contradicts the ITC’s report. Advocates for the Chinese side have given the law little attention.

The Chinese strategy opposing the imposition of safeguard remedies neglects both the politics of the American two-party system, and the legal purpose of safeguard provisions. Its reliance on dueling economic analyses, instead of law and a keener appreciation of the political situation of the President, probably will mean that the special safeguard for China will be applied for the first time. China may have something still to say, however, about the severity of the application.

The President is not likely to provide the full measure of relief proposed by the ITC because he may not want to gamble on the predictions that the tariffs would be prohibitive and cause even more market disruption, but he may be inclined to provide more “relief” than China would find acceptable. The August 17 deadline is not absolute (the statutory language instructing that the Trade Representative “should seek to conclude such agreement before the expiration of the 60-days consultation period” would seem equivocal enough were China to express immediately a commitment to a politically sensitive settlement). The statute also permits later review, on the President’s initiative, for modification, reduction, or termination of imposed relief. Mutual sensitivity to the domestic political implications of this case in both China and the United States could lead to an amicable compromise, albeit probably somewhat unsatisfactory (as compromises and settlements are supposed to be) for everyone. 

To continue reading the full article click here.
 

            美国钢铁工人联盟，一个符合《美国1974年贸易法》第201条“实体”规定的团体，于2009年4月向奥巴马政府递交申诉，要求实施暂时性保障措施以保护低品质轮胎在美生产和销售（详见2009年4月20日递交的申诉书））。虽然工会的这份申诉书并未得到生产这些轮胎的厂家的合作或支持，同时保障措施的初衷是为了保护具有生产能力的行业，但是奥巴马政府仍面临巨大政治压力以满足工会要求。

根据中国的入世协议，针对中国制定的特保法——421条款将于2012年失效。此后，中国将面临适用于任何国家的贸易保障措施。但在此之前，奥巴马政府必须衡量对华关系及国内利益和目标。和其它贸易救济行动不一样，保障措施需要总统最后定夺。

 

美国国际贸易委员会（United States International Trade Commission)于6月18日发表了一份报告，宣布“市场受影响”（market disruption），这是建议对中国轮胎采取特保措施的法律基础。7月9日，美国国际贸易委员会建议在未来三年内征收高额但逐年递减的关税。十位美国参议员致信奥巴马总统支持美国国际贸易委员会的建议。

 

以美国国际贸易委员会报告为基础，一个由美国贸易代表办公室牵头、美国国务院、商务部、劳工部和财政部组成的贸易政策委员会（Trade Policy Staff Committee, TPSC）将就是否批准这一特保措施向总统提出建议。如果应采取特保措施，那么将采取哪一措施、具体标准如何。8月7日，该委员会就本案在华盛顿召开了公开听证会，关切此案的各方也在8月11日前向该委员会递交了书面意见。

 

当国际贸易委员会裁定市场受影响，美国法律为和解提供了依据，如果中国愿意和解则必须在8月17日前做出决定。贸易政策委员会将在9月2日之前向总统提交建议。如和解无望，则总统必须在9月17日前就采取特保措施作出决定。

 

在本案中，中国采取了“共和党”的政治和政策立场——市场力量是迫使企业放弃在美生产低质轮胎的主导力量，降低生产成本是导致上千份工作转移到海外的原因。中国反对特保措施的战略是将市场力量置于美国就业问题之上，同时充分利用与国际贸易委员会报告相左的经济分析。中方聘请的代表对法律只给与微弱关注。

 

中方反对特保措施的战略不但忽视了美国的两党政治体制，同时也忽略了保障条例的法律目的。中方依赖经济分析、而非法律，以及缺少深入洞悉总统所处的政治环境，这意味着美国将针对中国第一次采取特保措施。中国也许还要申辩什么，但是只能就特保措施的程度。

 

奥巴马总统不太可能全盘接收国际贸易委员会的建议，一方面他不愿冒关税阻碍贸易、导致更严重的市场受影响的风险。另一方面，他也不愿采纳超出中国承受能力之外的特保措施。8月27日并不是最终截止日期（如果中方愿意立即接受政治上异常敏感的和解，法规原文规定美国贸易代表“必须在60天磋商期结束前签署协议”就显得模棱两可）。这一法律条规同时允许总统稍后提出重新审查，以改变、降低或终止特保措施。中美两国的国内政治环境都使得这一案件显得格外敏感，也将迫使两国政府妥协（就像所有的和解和妥协），最终导致各方都不满意。

 

全文请见英文。

 

 

（翻译：朱晶）

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link