
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping before a assembly through the Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation leaders’ week in Woodside, California, Nov. 15, 2023.
Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Pictures
China explained it “firmly opposes” the U.S. investigation into its maritime, logistics and shipbuilding industries, calling the shift a “mistake on best of a mistake.”
In an formal statement late Wednesday, China’s ministry of commerce claimed the U.S. presents hundreds of billions of bucks in “discriminatory” subsidies to its domestic industries, “yet accuses China of adopting so-named ‘non-sector procedures.'”
“In simple fact, the advancement of China’s industries is the consequence of companies’ technological innovation and lively participation in market place opposition,” the Chinese ministry stated.
On Wednesday, the Office of the U.S. Trade Agent initiated a probe into China’s maritime, logistics and shipbuilding industries, alleging that Beijing utilised “unfair, non-industry policies and procedures” to dominate these sectors. Less than the Trade Act of 1974, Portion 301 seeks to handle unfair overseas governing administration methods impacting U.S. commerce.
“By launching a new Part 301 investigation, the U.S. is building a blunder on leading of a miscalculation,” the China’s commerce ministry explained.
Beijing called on the U.S. to “regard multilateral regulations” and vowed to “take all essential methods to resolutely defend its legal rights and passions.”

The investigation will come as five countrywide labor unions introduced a petition on March 12 requesting the U.S. to probe the insurance policies and tactics of China’s maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding sectors.
U.S. Trade Consultant Ambassador Katherine Tai has pledged to launch a “full and complete investigation into the unions’ problems.”
“The allegations replicate what we have presently noticed throughout other sectors, in which [China] makes use of a broad variety of non-marketplace guidelines and techniques to undermine fair levels of competition and dominate the sector, both of those in China and globally,” she mentioned, according to the USTR assertion.
President Joe Biden has also named on the USTR to triple tariffs on Chinese metal and aluminum imports , in a bid to shield American industries.
“Chinese procedures and subsidies for their domestic steel and aluminum industries indicates higher-quality U.S. products are undercut by artificially small-priced Chinese alternate options made with bigger emissions,” the White Residence said in a assertion.
In an handle to union workers in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, Biden accused China of “cheating” in its metal trade techniques.
“They are not competing. They’re cheating,” he explained, incorporating that “we’ve noticed the injury right here in The united states.”
“The bottom line is that I want good competitiveness with China, not conflict.”