Posts Tagged: "trade policy"

Report Recommends Worker-Centric Competitiveness Approach to Trade Policy

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) this week released a report titled “A Worker-Centric Trade Agenda Needs to Focus on Competitiveness, Including Robust IP Protections.” The ITIF is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational institute that focuses on technological innovation and public policy. The report explained that U.S. trade policy has long been contentious. Traditionally, trade policy prioritized U.S. consumer interests. However, in response to a decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs and output due to unbalanced trade, President Biden raised a “worker-centric trade agenda,” turning away from this traditional approach. In his shift to a “worker-centric trade agenda,” the report recommended that President Biden should reject the counsel of anti-corporate, anti-trade progressives who deny that U.S. companies’ interests align with U.S. workers’ interests. A new competitiveness-focused approach to trade policy can support both.

Made in China 2025 Initiative at Center of Growing IP Tensions Between United States and China

A high ranking Chinese official has announced that the Chinese government rejected a request from the United States to end its subsidization of industries identified by the Made in China 2025 initiative. These key industry sectors are areas where technological development is very important and as such, they’ve been at the center of allegations over the forced transfer of patented technologies to Chinese domestic firms as well as outright theft of trade secrets. The Chinese government has responded to concerns over the Made in China initiative with one senior economic official defending the program as open to foreign and private companies according to a report by Hong Kong’s English daily The Standard.

Conservative Leaders to Trump: 301 investigation of China represents a good first step

Conservative leaders wrote the White House applauding this initiative, based on the property rights implications of IP expropriation. These conservative leaders note that China is hardly the only country that steals American IP, and such IP theft imposes significant costs to our economy, impairs American competitiveness and compromises our innovative future… The letter reads in part: “The 301 investigation represents a good first step toward asserting rules-based accountability and recommitting to an American IP-based competition policy. However, trade enforcement is only one pillar of an American economic competitiveness plan.”