Economy & Trade

American workers have long lamented the "off-shoring" of jobs to places like China. American industry has often struggled to compete with Chinese manufactured goods produced with much lower labor costs. That is partially the reality of an increasingly global competitive economy and a function of capitalism and free-market societies, which I support. However, the playing field is far from always level and fair.

Piracy of "intellectual property" by the Chinese with government participation - or at least a convenient blind-eye – has become a huge problem for American industry. While in Congress, I participated in hearings to highlight how blatant and damaging to America's industry and jobs the Chinese theft of patents and other assets had become. One family-owned manufacturer of fairly sophisticated machinery from New York testified that the Chinese had identically copied their patented products, put a different label on it, and was marketing it globally and destroying this generational American company's market opportunity. The entertainment industry also gave detailed testimony to illustrate how it suffers massive theft of movies and music at a cost of millions of dollars.

The Bush Administration has historically treated the Chinese with kid gloves. As members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Chinese are subject to the rules and agreements of member nations, and violations can be brought before the WTO to be resolved. The violations by the Chinese are numerous, blatant, and egregious, but the State Department has consistently resisted filling a formal complaint with the WTO, preferring instead to handle problems "diplomatically" – translation: by asking "please."

In the meantime, the Chinese global trade surplus has grown to a whopping $46.4 billion [link] for the first quarter of this year, doubling the surplus for the same period from 2006.

Now, the Bush Administration put a tepid foot down and announced it has filed two WTO complaints [link] against China for violations of copyright protections and market manipulation involving movies, music, books, and other intellectual property. Susan Schwab, the United States Trade Representative who filed the claim, said that piracy and counterfeiting had gotten "unacceptably high," so action was necessary. Not wanting to get the Chinese pirates too unhappy with us, Schwab announced that the U.S. would "remain open at any time to a comprehensive settlement" during the WTO process which typically drags on for years.

I'm a free-marketer, and I firmly believe that given a level playing field to operate on, American companies and workers will compete with anyone in the world. But I don't think America should be a doormat that another country thinks they get to walk all over. It no doubt makes life easier for diplomats to always be "liked" around the globe, but it should not come at the expense of hard working, deserving American citizens. When it comes to commerce and jobs, just like elsewhere in society, agreements need to be honored and laws need to be enforced.