U.S. and China Relations Strain with Charges of Protectionism

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China is once again accusing the United States of U.S. protectionism after “a U.S. trade panel’s recent decisions to set preliminary anti-dumping duties on electric blankets and wire decking from China.”

The spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce, Yao Jian, made the comments on Monday, responding to a U.S. trade panel’s recent decisions to set preliminary anti-dumping duties on electric blankets and wire decking from China.

Yao’s warning came while Beijing is also at loggerheads with Washington over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that China deems a breakaway province.

His strong words suggested trade friction could stoke broader tensions between the world’s biggest and third-biggest economies.

“Since the outbreak of the financial crisis, American trade protectionism has clearly raised its head, and China has become the biggest victim of U.S. abuse of trade relief measures,” Yao said in a Chinese-language statement posted on his ministry’s website (www.mofcom.gov.cn).

“Currently, trade protectionism is seriously affecting the stable development of Sino-U.S. trade and economic relations, and the U.S. should fully grasp the severity of this problem.”

The warning reflected the increasingly testy trade relations between China and the United States.

Critics point to a number of administration trade policies and parts of the President Obama’s State of the Union speech indicating a more protectionist approach to trad,e not only with China, but in general prompting many critics to snare at this new approach and reach the same conclusion as Mr. Jian.

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