On the same day the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Manufacturers was complaining to the Bush Administration that China is not living up to its World Trade Organization obligations, the NAM's board directed the group's president, John Engler, to establish a new task force to work with U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Chinese currency flexibility.
Currency undervaluation, counterfeiting, subsidies, value-added tax concerns and regulatory process deficiencies are problems for U.S. manufacturers trying to compete with China and sell more products in the Asian nation, Bill Primosch, the NAM's director for international business policy told the interagency Trade Policy Staff Committee on September 28. He urged the Bush Administration to further pressure China to, among other actions, move quickly toward greater market flexibility on its currency(the yuan) and step up prosecutions of people counterfeiting U.S. products.
The NAM said, also on September 28, that its new currency-flexibility task force would make an effort to make trade remedies more accessible to smaller U.S. manufacturers. "I have already begun calling top [Bush] Administration officials to begin exploring ways to make trade remedies a reality for the small firms that cannot afford the expensive legal cases that many are facing," Engler said.
