Interview with Keith Rockwell, Director, Information and External Relations Division, World Trade Organization

I’m deeply disappointed with where we are and I blame the big traders, China and the U.S. in particular.

So the reality is that because the WTO is a rules-based system, the image of the Anglo-American model, it is structurally incompatible with the rising economic systems of the world.

So I think it’s important to have a stabilizing effect like the WTO, as imperfect as it is, to at least try to bring people together as opposed to letting each nation go out on its own.

That’s one of our rules here is to try and provide some guidance in terms of rules of what you can and cannot do.

For Chinese policymakers, foreign direct investment is a tool, not an end in itself.

That’s why you have trade imbalances – because the system is not working.

It’s amazing to me, given that the WTO has no power whatsoever and can’t force a country to do anything, that countries generally live up to their obligations under the WTO.

China gained the benefits of the WTO – which is to get access to markets – but they also got protection from the WTO.

Jigar Shah, President of the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE) and co-founder of SunEdison, talks about the anti-subsidy and anti-dumping trade case against China. He argues that if China loses the case, that won’t bring solar panel manufacturing back to the U.S. But it will increase the price of solar panels, which will reduce demand and cost American jobs in installation, distribution, sales and marketing, and other downstream activities. An interview with ChinaGlobalTrade.com Director Molly Castelazo, recorded April 2012.

FutureofUSChinaTrade.com director Molly Castelazo recently spoke with Geng Xiao, Director of Columbia Global Centers / East Asia in Beijing, about his vision of the future of trade between the U.S. and China. He explained that the enormous productivity gains that China has been realizing (as it transitions from agriculture to industry) have put incredible upward pressure on interest rates, inflation, and exchange rates. Chinese policymakers have responded by fixing those rates, a solution Xiao says is unsustainable.