US Considering China Sanctions

US Considering China Sanctions

news.moneycentral.msn.com

The Bush administration is considering economic sanctions against China in a dispute over government subsidies.

It would open a new area for American companies to seek protection from a flood of Chinese imports, and would reverse 20 years of U-S trade precedent.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez is to announce the government's decision today.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Something has to be done about the massive trade deficit with China.

If they are artificially devaluing their currency in order to gain a competitive advantage over US manufacturers, or dumping goods at less than cost to saturate the market, the federal government needs to step in and protect our business interests.

The kind of leverage a state controlled economy like China's can apply must be balanced by boundaries enforced from Washington.

The flip side of this is a sort of sucker move by the US that draws China into an economically dependent position via the debt incurred by the trade deficit, in that if the US were to default on that debt it could crash the Chinese economy. I think this tactic has worked well for the US consumer economy in the past.



news.moneycentral.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

After 20 years of soaring trade deficits with China and then giving away millions of decent paying American jobs, coupled witht he myriad of technology that they've been granted, I think it's time to start doing something for the American people.

Hypothesis: When this goes mainstream, you'll hear the MS media cry over how the price of goods will increase hurting the average American. Reality: Goods will increase, but wages should too as more and more products will NEED to be produced here for our consumption - thus creating jobs. Remember, the media is owned by the same people that profit from slave wages in third world countries. Of course they need to scare us into thinking doom and gloom scenarios - a change will certainly cost them millions in income - like I care!

I guess it's a done deal and will change the way we trade certain paper with China.
Here's some details as well as an article about how this will effect the US economy/dollar:

The dollar fell against other major currencies Friday, erasing early gains after the U.S. Commerce Department announced sanctions against paper imports from China, the first time in 23 years that U.S. duty law has been applied to imports from that country.

The dollar abruptly changed course after Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said imports of Chinese coated free sheet paper would face preliminary countervailing duties ranging from 10.9% to 20.3%. Subsidies enjoyed by Chinese companies put U.S. producers at a disadvantage, said Gutierrez, who emphasized that the sanctions were legal under U.S. trade law. The greenback later pared some losses.

]custom.marketwatch.com

Also discussed in Other Global Politics
www.abovepolitics.com...

China Shifts to Euros for Iranian Oil

business.scotsman.com

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's state-run Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp, the biggest buyer of Iranian crude worldwide, began paying for its oil in euros late last year ...

"Most of China's purchases have shifted to euro. It's not difficult so long as our banks can handle that," said a Chinese state oil trader.

Japanese buyers, including top refiner Nippon Oil Corp., said they had all received inquiries from Iran to pay on non-U.S. dollar terms, but were awaiting an official request.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Seems like things are moving again in the petrodollar world including moving ahead with a Euro based oil bourse: Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse

This particular story came out a couple of days ago and is reporting a continuing development that began a few months ago.

I think it kind of puts this story from a couple of days ago into perspective: United States Sanctions China! Just in!

That makes more sense now.

Funny how these important economic and geopolitical developments are playing-out totally under the radar in the mainstream media.

Makes me think it's important or something.
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[edit on 3/31/2007 by Gools]

Originally posted by Icarus Rising
Something has to be done about the massive trade deficit with China.

If they are artificially devaluing their currency in order to gain a competitive advantage over US manufacturers, or dumping goods at less than cost to saturate the market, the federal government needs to step in and protect our business interests.

I think they (China) are actually hurting probably every countries economy by flooding the worlds market with "cheap labor" products (read, sweat shops) or at least the countries they can, with products that are produced, by today's standards, should be called slave factories.

Of course you could undermine another countries economic stability when one country (let's just say the US), pays a worker to make a product at a wage of $7.00 an hour, but in China, in sweat shops, people are forced to produce the same product for almost pennies an hour, and then couhtries (like the USA) allow them to ship their products into the US.

Overworked

Under Chinese law, employees cannot be forced to work more than eight hours a day and overtime must not exceed 40 hours a month.

There's a local minimum monthly wage too of $66. But every single worker we spoke to from many different factories around Shenzhen had at some point either been overworked or underpaid.

This is not an even playing field, and I really don't understand why countries haven't banned together, long before now, to stop this export of all the sweat shop products being exported from China.


[edit on 31/3/07 by Keyhole]