Hong Kong says Washington misinterpreted World Trade Organisation rules when criticising city in new report
- Government raises concerns with United States over National Trade Estimate report
Hong Kong has raised concerns with Washington over what it called an inaccurate trade report, in which the United States accused the city of failing to fulfil its obligations to the World Trade Organisation.
Hong Kong, a founding member of the WTO, said the US 2019 National Trade Estimate (NTE) report, released last week, had based its comments on a mistaken interpretation of a WTO requirement that asks members to submit reports on the collection of customs duties.
An annual report published by the Office of the US Trade Representative to look at the status of foreign trade and investment barriers to American exports around the world, the NTE was the latest in a series of papers published in recent months by Washington that have been critical of Hong Kong.
Late last month, the US State Department also raised concerns over Hong Kong’s diminished autonomy and made note of “accelerating negative trends” in connection to what it saw as increased intervention by Beijing in the running of Hong Kong.
Despite those concerns, the report said the US would continue to treat Hong Kong separately from the rest of China as a special trading partner.
This year’s NTE report contained some 540 pages, covering 65 countries and customs administrations.
In the section on Hong Kong, while acknowledging Hong Kong’s efforts to protect intellectual property rights, it highlighted that Hong Kong had failed to submit notifications of customs valuation to the WTO as required.
The customs value of imported goods is determined mainly for the purposes of applying ad valorem rates of customs duties.
America must get its facts right on Hong Kong
In a statement on Tuesday, a Hong Kong government spokesman said the NTE report “made an inaccurate statement about Hong Kong due to its misinterpretation” of the WTO requirement regarding the submission to the WTO Committee on Customs Valuation.
“Our Economic and Trade Offices in Washington and Geneva immediately followed up with the relevant US authorities on April 1 to convey our concerns over the inaccurate information and clarify that Hong Kong has, since 1996, fulfilled its notification obligations under the [WTO agreement],” the statement read.
“Hong Kong is a free port and there is no law, or administrative procedures, for valuing goods for customs duties purposes.
“In accordance with the relevant WTO agreement, Hong Kong has duly made the relevant notifications to the WTO in 1996. As there has been no change to our policy since, there is simply no need for Hong Kong to submit further notifications to the WTO.”
According to the NTE report, Hong Kong was America’s tenth-largest goods export market in 2018. The US goods trade surplus with Hong Kong was US$31.1 billion last year, a 4.3 per cent decrease from the previous year.
