Trump Trade Tsar Warns Of “Cataclysmic” Consequences If China Gets “Market” Status

Thursday, June 22, 2017
By Paul Martin

by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Jun 22, 2017

Trump’s trade tsar, Robert Lighthizer, aka the US Trade Representative speaking before Congress on Wednesday, fired a warning shot at both Beijing and the World Trade Organization, warning that any decision to label China a “market economy” would have “cataclysmic” consequences for the body which has governed over international trade for decades. The statement comes in the context of a possible trade war over steel imports, further distancing the Trump administration from the WTO, and as UBS wryly adds, “President Xi of China may not be getting the return he expected on his investment of political capital in the US.”

As the FT details, Lighthizer said the US was eager to see changes in the WTO’s dispute resolution system, arguing that the country had unfairly ended up as the top target for complaints in the global trade court. But the US trade rep singled out a dispute brought last December by China against the EU and US over whether it should be deemed a market economy as the “most serious litigation that we have at the WTO right now”.

“I have made it very clear that a bad decision with respect to the non-market economy status of China . . . would be cataclysmic for the WTO,” he said.

The Rest…HERE

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