Washington, DC
Today, Ways and Means Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-MA) released the following statement after President Trump announced the Administration’s findings from the Section 301 Investigation on China’s policies and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation:
“Whether we’ve heard the stories from individual inventors, small businesses, our largest multinational corporations, or our intelligence community, we know that China has abused its powers over a sustained period of time to extort, force, or outright steal intellectual property from American innovators. It should not surprise anyone that the Administration has found that the Chinese policies and practices that were examined in this Section 301 investigation have been unreasonable, discriminatory and have been harmful to U.S. commerce and the U.S. economy.
“The difficult question that past U.S. administrations have also grappled with is how to take effective action to safeguard U.S. intellectual property rights and to enforce U.S. economic and trade interests against China’s unfair practices.
“Based on today’s announcement, we know that the Trump Administration is now prepared to take a WTO case against China. We know that the Administration is seriously considering imposing tariffs on imports from China and that the Treasury Department has been tasked with considering investment restrictions. We still don’t know what tariffs will be imposed or whether investment restrictions will be made. We also don’t know whether the actions, when the Administration finally decides on them, will be effective.
“There is no doubt that action has been needed on these problems for a long time. Today’s announcement leaves us with more questions than answers.”
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