A senior World Trade Organization (WTO) official said in Geneva
on Friday that China was not to blame for the huge US trade deficit
and Washington could not solve this problem through
protectionism.
"Trade imbalance with China has given rise to certain proposed
measures in the Congress, and clearly the US administration is
watching that particular imbalance rather carefully," said Clemens
Boonekamp, director of the WTO's Trade Policy Review Division.
"But it's not bilateral imbalance that you need to worry about,
and to put it in more economic terms, the actual overall trade
imbalance, the current account imbalance, is a result of policies
elsewhere," Boonekamp told reporters after the WTO's three-day
policy review of the United States.
Boonekamp reminded reporters that the US administration and the
Congress were actually divided on the US-China trade deficit
issue.
"I don't think the US administration is actually blaming China.
There is, however, a lot of political pressure, political noise
particularly in the Congress that says China is to blame for this
in some way or another," he said.
The official said the current situation with China was in some
way a repeat of what happened with Japan in the early 1980s, except
that the US was not taking the same kind of measures that it took
very quickly against Japan.
"The US administration is certainly resisting what's taking
place in the Congress at the present moment," he noted.
According to the official, nearly all WTO members expressed
their concerns about the US "twin-deficits" during the three-day
policy review meeting.
The WTO members also expressed worries that the US fiscal and
trade imbalances might give rise to protectionist sentiments.
Asked whether he had given some direct recommendations to the US
on the imbalances, Boonekamp said he had only indirect suggestions:
protectionism is not an answer.
"This clearly is a macroeconomic phenomenon, part of the global
trade imbalance phenomenon, and not a problem to be addressed by
trade protectionism," he stressed.
(Xinhua News Agency March 25, 2006)