Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi told US officials at the 16th JCCT that the US abuse of Article 242 had severely harmed both the feeling of the Chinese people and the confidence of the Chinese public and enterprises about the international multi-lateral trade systems. Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai also negotiated with the US on this issue when he attended the OECD meeting, APEC meeting and WTO Mini-ministerial meeting.
Besides that, Lu made it very clear at the press conference that China would reserve its right to further actions within the WTO framework. He accused the US limits of deflecting the free trade principles advocated by the World Trade Organization and conflicting with the premise conditions for using Article 242 in the legal documents concerning China's WTO accession.
In May the US made the first limits decision on 7 certain textile imports from China based on its customs statistics for the first 4 months of the year. The US customs claimed that imports of the 7 categories reached 1.42 billion USD, involving cotton trousers, cotton knit shirts, underwear, MMF trousers, MMF knit shirts, men¡¯s woven shirts and combed cotton yarn. It said men's woven shirts took 15.9 percent of the US market, the highest out of Chinese textile products and combed cotton yarn's 3.2 percent was the least out of the textile imports from China.
The China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textiles has issued an urgent notice on July 24 calling on textile producers to halt further exports in the six categories under restriction except yarn as the US has stopped importing of these products. These producers may find themselves in a situation of "no quotas" left in the second half of this year.
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