The United States should pursue an investment treaty with China to protect intellectual property rights, write John R. Kasich, former governor of Ohio, and Marc L. Busch, professor of International Business Diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
US exporters of goods and services need a predictable path into China’s market. And American firms shouldn’t have to compete with subsidized Chinese vendors, especially not state-owned enterprises. But these issues can’t be resolved on a two-nation basis. They require multilateral attention, either at the World Trade Organization or through engagement in trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
There is, however, one bilateral initiative that the United States should pursue with China: an investment treaty to protect intellectual property rights. Our trade negotiations have not gone far enough in curbing Beijing’s forced technology transfer requirements, a practice that forces American firms to share their ideas with Chinese rivals in order to sell to — or invest in — China. These „ideas“ come in all forms of American-bred intellectual property, the very backbone of our ideas-based economy: our designs, innovations, medical advances and creative products.
