Good Trade News From China.

[babylonsister]

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=12&year=2010&base_name=good_trade_news_from_china

Good Trade News From China.

After much wrangling, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has negotiated some important agreements with China:

Ranchers, effectively barred from the Chinese market since 2003 after a scare over mad cow disease, will get renewed access to China and potentially billions of dollars in new sales. Alternative-energy companies will no longer have to build demonstration projects in China before bidding on wind projects there; telecommunications firms will avoid rules that favor locally developed technology; government industrial catalogs will be rewritten so they are not biased against imported equipment and capital goods; and software companies should benefit as Chinese government agencies are pressed to use only legally licensed software.

While much of the focus on the U.S.-China relationship concerns macrolevel debates over currency valuation and the balance of trade, the action is taking place on a microlevel. Barriers to trade come in all shapes and sizes, and it's easier to focus on one specific industry than to see a dramatic shift in China's export-driven economic strategy.

-- Tim Fernholz

[Clio the Leo]

1. journey of a thousand miles..... nt