China’s market economy status in the World Trade Organization falls within one of Robert Lighthizer’s areas of expertise, Financial Times reports.
Donald Trump ‘s trade tsar has fired a warning shot at both Beijing and the World Trade Organisation, cautioning that any decision to label China a «market economy» would have «cataclysmic» consequences for the body.
Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, Robert Lighthizer said the US was eager to see changes in the WTO’s dispute resolution system, arguing that the country had unfairly ended up as the top target for complaints in the global trade court.
But the US trade representative singled out a dispute brought last December by China against the EU and US over whether it should be deemed a market economy as the «most serious litigation that we have at the WTO right now».
«I have made it very clear that a bad decision with respect to the non-market economy status of China . . . would be cataclysmic for the WTO, » he said.
Mr Lighthizer did not say what US action that would lead to and he added he was «assuming . . . that the WTO is going to do the right thing». But the warning pointed to how the Trump administration is upending the US relationship with the WTO and other multilateral institutions it helped create following the second world war.
During his campaign for president Mr Trump threatened at one point to pull the US out of the WTO. While his administration has since moderated its tone it has also made its sceptical view of the Geneva-based body clear since taking office.
Mr Lighthizer is a longstanding critic of the WTO and has argued for the US to take a far more muscular approach to its relationship with both the trade body and China.
