US Declares Victory Again In WTO Fight Over US Content In China

from the china-probably-doesn't-care dept

Back in January, the WTO ruled against the US in an intellectual property dispute with China. Well, to be specific, there were three issues being discussed, and on the two important ones, the US lost. On the final, not particularly important one, the US won. But, as it has done before, the US took that and declared victory, leading to all sorts of headlines claiming that the US had “won” a trade dispute with China. So, when similar headlines showed up, again with the US claiming victory, it seemed worth exploring in more detail. You can read the full WTO report, where you’ll see how highly technical this specific argument was, and note that, indeed, the WTO basically upheld the earlier rulings, with minor (mostly meaningless) exception.

So, the US does get to declare “victory” on this particular issue, but it’s unlikely that China really cares. Also, it’s more than a bit ironic that the US suddenly acts like a WTO ruling like this is meaningful. It’s also striking to hear US Trade Rep Ron Kirk claim that “We expect China to respond promptly to these findings and bring its measures into compliance,” when the US itself continues to ignore similar WTO rulings against the US when it comes to online gambling in Antigua. For the US to act like the WTO rulings mean something, shouldn’t it need to live up to those rulings when it loses as well?

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Comments on “US Declares Victory Again In WTO Fight Over US Content In China”

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2 Comments
:) says:

The U.S. is a wimp.

In this case the U.S. is the weaker side.

China can safely ignore the U.S., the U.S. can’t hurt China without ending up in a economic shit storm.

Militarily they both are equals with the U.S. having a bit of a leverage over China.

So really I think the U.S. media may be doing what the media in Antigua did, they probably celebrated and them they realized the U.S. wouldn’t comply LoL

That is why I do understand others countries not willing to be in a weaker position like Europe doing its best to fend off american big corporations.

Latin America forming their own group for trade and etc.

When you get weak you get bullied.

Anonymous Coward says:

I know that Canada has taken the US to the WTO several times, and won. The US has seen fit to ignore these decisions, even going as far as declaring that they won in some cases.

Before the US (or any other country) should be able to take another country to the WTO, the WTO should require proof of their good standing in regards to previous judgments.

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