US lawmakers reintroduce bill to revoke China’s trade relations status
- The legislation would require the US president to approve regular trade relations annually
- ‘It’s time to protect American jobs and hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for their forced labour camps,’ lawmaker says
US Republican lawmakers reintroduced on Thursday a bill that would revoke the permanent normal trading status that Washington has had with Beijing for the past two decades, the latest in a series of efforts by China hawks in Congress to decouple the two countries’ economies.
China's trading status “has supercharged the loss of American manufacturing jobs”, said Cotton. “It’s time to protect American jobs and hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for their forced labour camps and egregious human rights violations.”
Permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status was passed by Congress and signed into law by then-president Bill Clinton in 2000, allowing the two sides to align the bilateral trade relationship with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which China acceded to a few months later.
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