| >It started 24 years ago with the Clinton administration granting China "most favored nation" status. This is wholly inaccurate. China has had MFN status continuously since 1980.[0] Clinton renewed China's MFN waiver in 1994, as did every president each year until trade relations were permanently normalized under Bush in 2002 after China acceded to the WTO.[1] "Most favored nation" itself is a bit of a misnomer — now known as "(permanent) normal trade relations," it's a status granted to every trading partner. Only two countries (Cuba & North Korea) are denied NTR, with an additional six (Belarus, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) granted temporary NTR under periodically renewed waivers.[2] Those denials and waivers are based on the Jackson–Vanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, punishing countries for violating human rights under communism, not as a trade negotiation tactic.[3] MFN/PNTR is a core tenet of the world trade agreements (and liberal international order generally) that the United States has been pushing for decades. The very first article of the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) established unconditional MFN treatment among members.[4] It remains the guiding principle of the modern WTO. The denial of MFN/PNTR status to China was an anomaly, not the norm — a bet that allowing China into the global community would accomplish more for human rights and well-being than isolating China and preventing the economic rise that's propelled half a billion people out of extreme poverty in three decades. [0] http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/06/03/china.trade/ [1] https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/20... [2] http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/96-463.pdf (n.b. Slightly outdated - Vietnam and Ukraine got PNTR in 2006 along with Russia and Moldova in 2012 in the sanctions law known as the Magnitsky Act.) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson–Vanik_amendment [4] https://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/gatt47_01_e.htm#a... |