Chi is no protectionist: US experts

Washington, June 24: The experts at a leading US think tank said Chi’s trade protection is not significantly above that in large high-income economies like the United States. US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross labelled Chi as “the most highly protectionist of the big countries” in his recent interview with the Wall Street Jourl. His Chi-bashing rhetoric, however, was refuted by two economists with Peterson Institute For Intertiol Economics (PIIE), Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday. In an online article recently published on PIIE website, senior fellow Nicholas Lardy and research alyst Zixuan Huang argued that Ross’s accusation was outdated and neglected the progress Chi had made over the last three decades.

“Chi was a highly protectionist trading tion three decades ago, before it initiated negotiations to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). But to qualify for entry and to fulfill its WTO commitments after entry, Chi drastically reduced its average statutory tariff from about 45 percent in the mid-1980s to only 10 percent in 2015,” said the article. The two economists also found that the weighted average applied tariff rate applied by Chi in 2015 stood at 3.4 percent, only slightly higher than that in the seven advanced industrial economies and well below rates applied in Brazil and India. (IANS)