Doug Bereuter: “last week, U.S. trade negotiators once again met with their Chinese counterparts in an attempt to discuss China's…”

“last week, U.S. trade negotiators once again met with their Chinese counterparts in an attempt to discuss China's accession to the World Trade Organization, the WTO. Unfortunately, but also predictably, these talks did not produce any significant breakthroughs. The Chinese repeated their same old, unsatisfactory demands while offering only minimal concessions. Though the Washington, D.C. rumor mill and so-called conventional wisdom are predicting that the forthcoming Sino-American meeting between President Clinton and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji will showcase an agreement for China's WTO accession, the United States and China remain so far apart on so many trade issues that this Member is doubtful that a complete and commercially viable agreement can be reached in such a short time frame. Instead, the President and the Premier will be faced with China continuing to have a huge and growing trade surplus with the United States. The record $60 billion trade deficit with China in 1998 represents a 15.5 percent increase over the 1997 level. Now as the trade deficit with China is averaging more than $1 billion per week, under current trends the projected trade deficit for 1999 could exceed $70 billion. It is also clear that the American exports will continue to face new and growing problems of access to the Chinese markets.”