Why Trump tariffs on China not stopping theft of trade secrets

[nir]

Tariffs not stopping China theft of trade secrets

 

Yanjun Xu claimed he worked for a science and technology association. But federal prosecutors say he was really a Chinese spy looking to steal trade secrets from U.S. aviation and aerospace companies.

 

Hiding his true identity, Xu sought out leaders in the aviation field and recruited them to travel to China, often telling them they would be delivering a university presentation. Xu and others paid their travel costs and provided stipends – and plotted ways to steal sensitive technology from their companies, according to prosecutors.

 

Xu’s ploy, described in an October indictment charging him with economic espionage, may be one of the more brazen Chinese attempts to steal U.S. intellectual property. But it’s far from an isolated case, experts say.

 

The theft of U.S. intellectual property, mostly by the Chinese, costs the U.S. an estimated $225 billion to $600 billion a year and represents “an assault the likes of which the world has never seen,” analyst Richard Ellings said.

 

“You can’t find a company that hasn’t been assaulted, and half of them don’t even know it,” said Ellings, executive director of the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property.

 

President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2017.

Andrew Harnik/AP

 

President Donald Trump cited China’s theft of intellectual property as one of his reasons for slapping $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports earlier this year. Tariffs, intellectual property theft and the forced transfer of intellectual property will be among the topics of discussion when Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet over dinner Saturday during the G-20 summit in Argentina, White House officials said. 

 

"The rest of the world knows full well about the issues of IP theft and forced transfers of technology," Trump's top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said. "This idea that other countries are not with us is just not true. It's time for a change in their behavior." 

 

Though Trump’s tariffs were intended to punish China for stealing intellectual property, they haven’t been much of a deterrent.

 

 

China shows no sign of ending its practice of conducting and supporting cyber-enabled theft and intrusions into the commercial networks of U.S. companies, a report by the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office concluded last week.

 

In fact, China’s use of cyber-enabled theft has increased in frequency and sophistication since the trade representative’s office issued its initial findings in March, the report said.

 

In August, for example, the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future found a series of cyber attacks had taken place in late May from internet addresses linked to Tsinghua University, a major research center in Beijing. The attackers appeared to be conducting surveillance on organizations related to Alaska Gov. Bill Walker’s trade delegation trip to China and focused on obtaining information about the oil and gas industry, according to the trade representative’s report.

 

In October, experts affiliated with the U.S. Naval War College and Tel Aviv University published a study finding that China Telecom, one of China’s three major state-owned telecoms enterprises, hijacked internet traffic and directed it to Mainland China servers for possible collection and analysis. China Telecom maintains 10 locations in North America that are used to hijack internet traffic in the United States and Canada and divert it to China, where it is copied, the report said.

 

Such illicit conduct provides the Chinese government with unauthorized access to intellectual property, trade secrets, confidential business information, technical data, negotiating positions, and sensitive and proprietary international business communications, the trade representative’s report said.

 

For businesses, “it’s a significant and longstanding problem,” said Jeremie Waterman, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vice president for Greater China.

 

China’s efforts to get its hands on the business secrets of foreign companies aren’t limited to cyber-theft or even outright theft. Experts say the Chinese government places restrictions on foreign companies that often force them to give up their technology secrets as a condition of entering the Chinese market.

 

Certain companies looking to do business in China are required to form a joint venture with a Chinese firm and share their technology secrets with the partner company as part of the deal. In other cases, the Chinese government requires the transfer of technology to obtain the business permits and regulatory approvals needed to do business.

 

Peter Navarro, director of the White House Trade Council, wrote last year in a column in USA TODAY that China also is increasingly forcing U.S. companies to conduct research and development – the seeds for future intellectual property – on Chinese soil.

 

The Chinese demands pose a dilemma for U.S. companies wanting to do business in China, said Erin Ennis, senior vice president of the U.S.-China Business Council.

 

“It’s an existential choice for them: Do they want to be in the market or not?” she said. “And they are being given a choice that makes that very difficult for them to decide. Companies shouldn’t have to make that kind of a choice.”

 

Every business person who travels to China assumes that his or her laptop and phone will be compromised, Ellings said, so many bring along a computer that they can throw away as soon as they leave the country.

 

Companies have had limited success in challenging the forced transfer of technology in Chinese courts, but the penalties imposed for violations are usually so small that they aren’t a deterrent, Ellings said.

 

The U.S. Department of Justice recently has begun to take a tougher stance, unveiling a new economic espionage initiative and filing formal charges against Chinese nationals like Xu, who pleaded not guilty in October to conspiring and attempting to commit economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. One of the companies he is accused of targeting is GE Aviation, a subsidiary of General Electric, which is headquartered just outside Cincinnati.While business groups agree with the Trump administration’s diagnosis of the problem, they don’t believe that placing tariffs on Chinese imports is the right prescription.

 

The tariffs-only approach “does not create meaningful solutions and policy change in China to fully address the problems,” said Ryan Ong, director of international business policy at the National Association of Manufacturers.

 

Tariffs are counterproductive because they end up harming businesses, farmers, other workers and the economy in general, said Waterman of the Chamber of Commerce.

 

“We are doing more harm to ourselves than we are actually addressing the problem of coerced technology transfer,” he said.

 

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[steven36]

Tariffs were not introduced to stop theft of trade secrets no way that the NSA and FBI  job to stop, it was introduced to slow down them exporting  much more than they import . 17 years ago farmers and other things in the USA did just fine without importing what very little they do to China. Theft of trade secrets is just and excuse one of many  that  the Government uses to keep imposing them on China,  but i would not expect the liberal main stream media to understand it. It's very simple if China has agreement  the USA likes then things will get better, if they don't things will get worse. Always things have to get worse before they get better ..

 

Quote

U.S. goods and services trade with China totaled an estimated $710.4 billion in 2017. Exports were $187.5 billion; imports were $522.9 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with China was $335.4 billion in 2017.

https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china

 

What the media says has no pull  with this administration and what they  say want change nothing,  so what don't help us,  only hurts us   , they see them as the enemy and no wonder with the stuff they write about them. They got like 2 years before what they say may help there left wing causes because even if  they impeach Trump you  will just get someone who likes China even less as president.