As China and US open trade doors, American IT industry still left knocking
Progress could come however in final round of talks on 100-day plan expected over the summer, observer says
The newly cut trade deal between the US and China did not include America’s information technology industry, denying it any further access to the world’s second-largest economy.
The big winners instead under the agreement, announced on Thursday, were US agricultural and financial sectors. American beef, liquefied natural gas, and credit rating and electronic payment services will all have a shot at a greater presence in China.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, an industry think tank, was critical of the deal, saying it “opens up Chinese markets for some commodity-based and finance industries in return for giving China free rein to use its massive foreign reserves to buy up American companies in advanced industries”.
Those industries include computing, aerospace, semiconductor manufacturing, automaking, internet services, clean energy, cloud computing, the foundation’s president, Robert Atkinson, said in a statement released on Friday.
During his testimony to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee on April 26, Atkinson said the “current and emerging challenge will be around advanced industries that the United States currently leads or holds strong global positions in, because those are the industries China is now targeting for dominance”.
“We urge the [Trump] administration to demand real changes in Chinese policies related to America’s advanced industries,” Atkinson said. “That should start with the first meeting of the Comprehensive Economic Dialogue in the summer of 2017.”