Washington has warned Brussels against granting China ‘market economy status’, saying the long-sought trade concession could hamper efforts to prevent Chinese companies flooding US and European markets with unfairly cheap goods.
Achieving market economy status (MES) at the World Trade Organisation is one of China’s core strategic goals. Among other benefits, it would make it far more difficult for the US or EU to impose steep tariffs on Chinese companies for unfairly dumping low-cost goods on their markets.
US officials have warned EU counterparts that granting Beijing MES would amount to “unilaterally disarming” Europe’s trade defences against China. In private, they are scathing about the move, which they see as the latest example of Europeans seeking to curry favour with Beijing to gain billions of euros in investment.