U. S.-China Trade Tensions Increase
The Chinese have pretty good reason for feeling picked on by the United States these days. There are hints that the U. S. may move to crack down on intellectual property piracy by the Chinese:
WASHINGTON, April 6 — After months of prodding China to crack down on pirated copies of American movies, music and software, the Bush administration appears ready to escalate the dispute into a legal confrontation.
In recent weeks, administration officials have strongly hinted that they are close to filing a formal trade complaint against China at the World Trade Organization, saying that China has failed to prosecute all but a small fraction of the ubiquitous and visible street trade in bootlegged American entertainment.
“The United States has made it clear that formal W.T.O. consultations will be necessary without concrete actions by China in this area,” the office of the United States trade representative warned this week in its annual trade report to Congress.
The administration went on to complain about “inadequate” enforcement of intellectual property rights — copyrights, patents and trademarks — in movies, music, books, pharmaceuticals, software and many other areas.
The phrase ‘picked on’ would suggest that the speaker/writer thinks China is innocent of such abuses. Is that what you intended, in this case?
I don’t think we’re picking on the Chinese but I can see how they might think we are. I’ve thought that U. S. trade policy was ill-conceived for more than a generation.