Washington, D.C., partner Elliot Feldman, leader of Baker Hostetler's international trade practice, was quoted in the December 2009 edition of China Economic Review magazine, in the article, "Home or Away?," part of the publication's special report on manufacturing.
According to the article, when China entered the WTO in 2001, Beijing might not have envisioned getting involved in so many trade disputes across such a broad spectrum of products—from steel pipes to tires to chicken—or would have expected so much upside pressure on the country's currency. As of October, the country has also been involved in 88 "anti-dumping and countervailing" probes involving 19 countries, covering US$10.3 billion worth of products. Fourteen of these cases were launched by the United States, according to the article.
According to Feldman, a frequent contributor to the firm's China-U.S. Trade Law blog, it's not unusual for trade and industry safeguard actions spike during times of economic difficulty. "A natural American instinct is to say if things go bad, then blame foreigners. But it turns out that this instinct is universal. So when things go badly, there are more case—it's not just protectionism," Feldman said. "All trade disputes begin with politics."
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