Will there be fair competition when there is “America First” everywhere?

Before, U.S. bullying thwarted Sino-US economic and trade consultations; now, the U.S. abuses national power to suppress Chinese technology companies like Huawei in an all-round manner. The stunning consecutive moves of the U.S. reveal the hegemonistic logic of ”America first”, and its aim of suppressing Chinese development and protecting the vested interests of American hegemony.

The U.S. and China, both members of the World Trade Organization , should try to solve bilateral trade divergences and frictions through WTO dispute settlement mechanisms. However, the U.S. has taken actions unilaterally--imposing addtitional tariffs upon Chinese exports to the U.S., applying “long-arm jurisdiction”, “extending domestic rules”, utilizing “sanctions and intimidation”, and so on. Such behaviors of unilateralism violate WTO rules and harm the environment for fair competition in the international in the international community.

The U.S. applies WTO rules that are conducive to the U.S. but rejects those it finds undesirable. From the perspectives of some U.S. government officials, “America First” is the only criterion for resolving trade frictions.

The U.S. imposes its own asking prices on China and ignores China’s reasonable requests. Thus, it’s obvious that there won’t be policy coordination and positive interactions, nor will there be satisfying consultation results. The U.S. should be responsible for the frustration of consultation. The U.S. considers itself as the model of applying fair competition of market economics, but the U.S. politicizes Sino-US trade and economic frictions, which violates the rules of fair competition of the world economy.

 In contrast with suppressing Chinese enterprises like Huawei, the U.S. violates the rules of market economics and offers subsidies to domestic high-tech enterprises. According to related reports, electric vehicles manufacturer Tesla has received 3,500 million dollars in government subsidies since 2007; high-tech enterprises like Google and Apple have also acquired large sums of subsidies. The U.S. Government utilizes double standards toward domestic and foreign enterprises, harms fair competition in the world economy, and violates the promised most-favored-nation treatment obligation. What the U.S. has done perfectly aligns with typical unilateralism and hegemonism, which is intolerable to the international community including China.

The U.S. should return to the principles of non-politicization of economic and trade disputes that should be discussed only from the economic perspective. International relations of trade and investment must be built upon the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit. To foreign enterprises including Chinese enterprises, the U.S. should offer equal treatments. It’s beneficial to both the U.S. and China to resolve the trade disputes, which will also benefit the world economy. What the U.S. needs to do now is to rationally and pragmatically solve the Sino-US trade frictions through equal consultations.

Contributed by Tang Yanlin for Guangming Daily

Translated by Gao Xinran