Peter Navarro says phase one US-China trade deal will provide swift enforcement
- Mechanism ‘very, very strong’ compared to WTO’s dispute settlement system, White House trade adviser says
- Agreement will take ‘big chunk’ out of China’s ‘seven deadly sins’, Navarro adds, including intellectual property theft and currency manipulation
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Doug Palmer on politico.com on January 13, 2020.
The phase one US-China trade deal that President Donald Trump will sign will allow the United States to swiftly reimpose tariffs if it unilaterally determines that China has broken any of its commitments, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said.
If “Ambassador Robert E. Lighthizer, the US trade representative, has a complaint that comes before him, that will be adjudicated within 90 days,” Navarro said in an interview on Monday on the NPR news programme 1A.
“And if he thinks that hasn't been addressed properly, we have [the right to impose a] proportionate response and the Chinese have promised not to retaliate.”
“That’s a very, very strong enforcement mechanism,” compared to the World Trade Organisation’s dispute settlement system, where complaints filed by one country against another can take three years to resolve, Navarro continued.
Navarro said the agreement will “take a big chunk out of [China’s] seven deadly sins”: cyber-intrusions, intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, dumping, unfair competition from state-owned enterprises, currency manipulation and fentanyl shipments to United States that have helped fuel the opioid crisis.