U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab, together with Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi, convened today the 18th U.S.–China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) in Beijing, China. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also participated. The JCCT, a high-level government-to-government dialogue, seeks to address market access issues and provide a forum to discuss trade and investment matters.
JCCT OUTCOMES Intellectual Property Rights • China and the United States agreed to exchange information on customs seizures of counterfeit goods in order to further focus China’s enforcement resources on companies exporting such goods. In 2006, 81 percent of seizures by U.S. Customs and Border Protection of counterfeit goods are from China.
• China agreed to strengthen enforcement of laws against company name misuse, a practice in which some Chinese companies have registered legitimate U.S. trademarks and trade names without legal authority to do so. The two sides also agreed to cooperate on case-by-case enforcement against such company name misuse.
Pharmaceutical Ingredients Medical Devices • China also agreed to suspend implementation of AQSIQ Decree 95, a regulation that would have produced additional testing and inspection redundancies targeted exclusively at imported medical devices.
• The U.S. medical device industry estimates it exported $713 million in medical devices to China, and that the costs of testing redundancies are in the tens of millions of dollars. Such delays prevent Chinese patients from benefiting from new medical technologies and cause lost sales opportunities for U.S. companies.
• China agreed to remove “contract value” requirements from draft agricultural licensing regulations that would have required U.S. farmers and agricultural exporters to disclose confidential business information.
• China agreed to eliminate the requirement to submit viable biotech seeds for testing, which will reduce the possibility of illegal copying of patented agricultural materials.
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Source: U.S. Department of Commerce
