January 21, 2011 CNN Student News Transcript: China's Trade Policies
Stainless Steel Wire Basket Manufacturer Drew Greenblatt discusses
China, Trade Agreements & the U.S. Jobs
FRED BERGSTEN, PETERSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS:
The Chinese government has laws that protect intellectual property, but in practice, enforcement is very lax. And in some cases,
Chinese government agencies, including military agencies, will sometimes rip off the intellectual property themselves.
TODD: Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute says the Chinese steal American intellectual property by reverse engineering:
buying American products, figuring out how they're put together. Then they make those parts themselves at a cheaper cost.
Then there are complaints about China's trade rules.
Take a company like Marlin Steel Products in Baltimore,
where 20 percent of revenue comes from exports.
Company president Drew Greenblatt
says he'd like to export to China, but the Chinese have a rule that
many products sold to government agencies there, or which get tax breaks, have to be made completely in China.
Known as the "indigenous innovation policy," it stacks the deck against American companies like Marlin Steel.
There's a direct impact, Greenblatt says, on American jobs.
DREW GREENBLATT:
For every million dollars in new exports I get, I'm going to hire about eight more people.
TODD:
Chinese officials say their trade policies are not unfair, and they're stepping up enforcement of intellectual
property laws. But the list of American complaints may prompt action from Congress, especially newly empowered
Republican leaders in the House.
