China falling short of CF regulation in Squo

The Office of the United States Trade Representative criticized China, Russia and other countries on Wednesday for continuing to fall short of promises to protect intellectual property in  that cataloged various infringements by America’s trading partners.

The annual report placed 27 trading partners on so-called watch lists for intellectual property infringement, and labeled Argentina, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and Venezuela as being on a “priority watch list” of countries that had the most egregious practices or the biggest effect on U.S. businesses.

In a call with reporters on Wednesday, senior U.S.T.R. officials said the Biden administration continued to closely monitor China’s progress in carrying out the commitments it had made to strengthen its protections for foreign copyrights, trade secrets and other forms of intellectual property in  signed with President Donald J. Trump.

The trade agreement included commitments to make reforms to China’s treatment of trade secrets, technology transfer, patents and pharmaceutical intellectual property, among a variety of issues. It followed a 2018 investigation by U.S.T.R., which found that China had pressured companies into transferring technology and used other unfair means to gain key technologies that would give its companies a competitive edge. Those findings provided the rationale for the Trump administration to begin imposing tariffs on China.

Last year, China amended various laws to strengthen its intellectual property protections in line with its commitments in the trade deal. But intellectual property owners have continued to express concerns that those measures were inadequate, U.S.T.R. said in the report. And Chinese government bodies and officials have also continued to make worrying assertions about their intellectual property system’s serving the needs of domestic innovation and providing a “strategic resource” for Chinese competitiveness abroad, the agency’s report said.

China remains the largest single source of counterfeit and pirated goods, accounting for more than 83 percent of what global authorities seized in 2020, the report said. That included medical products like Covid-19 testing kits, N95 respirator masks, sanitizers and disinfectants.

Biden administration officials have said repeatedly that China is falling short of its commitments under the trade deal and expressed frustration with a lack of progress in negotiations.

Top Biden administration officials have been discussing changes to the vast array of tariffs the Trump administration imposed on China, including offering more tariff relief for consumer goods and beginning a new investigation into China’s use of industrial subsidies. That investigation could result in more levies on strategic products, according to sources familiar with the matter.

But more than a year into office, they have yet to announce substantive changes to the terms of trade between China and the United States.