First, it makes provision for close oversight of China's progress in implementing its WTO commitments. Second, it creates legislation to implement the procedure negotiated by U.S. trade negotiators allowing the United States to impose special limits on imports from China that disrupt the U.S. market. Third, it creates a commission to focus ongoing attention on China's observance of human rights. Finally, it states the sense of Congress that Taiwan should be allowed to enter the WTO on the same schedule as China. The provisions aimed at enforcing the WTO agreement with China are particularly important.
China has an abysmal record of keeping the trade commitments it has made.
Despite some statements made in the debate by administration officials, China has violated every recent trade agreement with the United States on topics from market access to prison labor. Even the agreement to protect intellectual property, often held out as a success, has shown poor results. According to industry estimates, piracy rates in China remain more than 90 percent, and economic losses due to piracy have actually risen since the most recent effort to enforce the agreement. WTO membership may bring multilateral pressure to bear on China to improve its trade performance. But the WTO is also likely to have considerable difficulty enforcing its rules in a country without an established rule of law and with an entirely opaque process of making trade policy.