NOURNEWS - The World Trade Organization recently announced that the United States violated international trade regulations by labeling goods imported from Hong Kong as goods imported from China.
The United States claims that Hong Kong sought to maintain relative independence from Beijing in 2020 with massive protests, which it was unable to obtain due to international laws and the authority of the United Nations.
At that time, the Donald Trump administration in the United States, which no longer had adherence to acceptable economic value of Hong Kong, removed the special trade privileges granted to Hong Kong in a profit-seeking move, and US customs officials said that goods produced in this important economic region of the world no longer can enter the United States with the "Made in Hong Kong" label.
Hong Kong officials, while being dissatisfied with this unilateral policy of Washington, state that this action means ignoring Hong Kong's status as an independent member of the World Trade Organization, and as a result, it is considered a violation of international trade regulations.
For this reason, the dispute settlement body of the World Trade Organization called the action of the United States in changing the labels "Made in Hong Kong" to "Made in China" as unjustifiable based on the regulations of this organization.
The World Trade Organization voted to condemn the United States, stating that the United States' labeling requirements have deprived Hong Kong-made products of previous competitive advantages over other competitors.
Although this sentence was met with strong criticism from Washington, so that the American officials called it a mistake "both in interpretation and in conclusion" and considered it only in response to China's extremely worrying actions against the interests of the United States, and invalidated the competence of the World Trade Organization in issuing a decision in this regard.
Washington had previously considered relatively good customs privileges for imported goods from this region due to the semi-autonomy of Hong Kong from Beijing, but after the implementation of Beijing's security law, not only the Trump administration concluded that "Hong Kong is no longer autonomous enough!" but also as a result, it placed the commercial relationship with this country in the framework of China, and the Biden administration did not change this self-interested policy.
In the case of Taiwan, China believes that Taiwan is a part of this country, but Taiwan considers itself an independent country, and the authorities of Taiwan consider the United States to be their biggest ally. Washington also considers itself obliged to help the island to defend itself, citing the law, but the international actions, especially after the war in Ukraine, have taken place in such a way that the possibility of repeation of the Hong Kong incident for Taiwan does not seem so impossible.
BY: Pooya Mirzaei
NOURNEWS