US-based IPC (Association Connecting Electronics Industries) has made the Chinese “currency manipulation crisis” top priority during Capitol Hill Day in Washington, D.C. Under the direction of the IPC Government Relations (GR) Committee, the organization provides IPC members with an opportunity to meet with Congressional representatives and voice their support for legislation that promotes the global competitiveness of the U.S. electronics interconnect industry. This year, IPC will concentrate its efforts on addressing the trade challenges that face U.S. manufacturers. The committee believes many of these challenges stem from China’s lack of implementation and compliance of their WTO obligations and particularly their manipulation of the Renminbi against the dollar. To address this, IPC, as a member of the Fair Currency Alliance, has actively supported the preparation of a Section 301 trade action to be filed with the U.S. Trade Representatives Office that would compel China to comply. “China’s manipulation of the Yuan has had a devastating affect on U.S. manufacturers. It has created an unfair advantage for Chinese manufacturers exporting to the U.S.,” said Dan Feinberg, chairman of the IPC Government Relations Steering Committee and president of Fein-Line Associates. “China’s currency actions are direct violations of their commitments under the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” added John Kania, IPC’s director of government relations. “IPC’s support for the Section 301 trade case is consistent with IPC’s trade policy to advocate strict enforcement of our trading partners’ commitments under the WTO.”
And this is what current foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao during a press conference about Chinese-US trade frictions officially said: “The trade disputes between China and the United States are within the field of economic and trade cooperation between the two countries. We hope the two sides can remove the disputes and solve the problems in the economic and trade relations through consultations on an equal footing. And we are opposed to politicalizing the problems in China-US economic and trade relations”. The problem is, as seen off-shore, it coincides with the US domestic politics when President Bush is seeking reelection and is facing the issue of creating more job opportunities with the high unemployment rate. The question is, do Chinese officials think the so-called trade friction is a US domestic political issue or a pure trade issue? Also, many European firms see massive problems in an extremely low-valued Renminbi.
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