The Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is telling the Bush Administration to designate China "a priority foreign country" and begin to prepare a World Trade Organization (WTO) case to deal with counterfeit goods coming from China.
"Counterfeiting on the part of Chinese companies has reached epidemic proportions. This is grand larceny on a massive scale, and it has to stop now," bluntly states NAM president John Engler. "The time for China to tinker with its intellectual property protection processes has come and gone," says Engler. "Now it's time to throw the counterfeiters in jail and interdict mass shipments of counterfeit goods before they ever leave Chinese ports."
Preparation of a WTO case, which could be filed jointly with Canada, Japan and the European Union, could go forward unless a U.S. government review of the situation showed a substantial decrease in Chinese counterfeiting and copyright infringement.
