Bipartisan Bill Introduced to End China PNTR

A leading voice in the House behind the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act introduced a bipartisan bill that would remove permanent normal trade relations from China and instead would require annual affirmations from the administration that "the Chinese government is making serious and sustained improvement in respecting human rights" in order to retain most-favored-nation tariffs.

China didn't gain PNTR until 1999, but it received that kind of tariff treatment from 1980 to 1998 due to administrative waivers. Congress could have overridden the waivers but never did. Most Chinese goods already face substantially higher tariffs than other exports due to Section 301 tariffs.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., introduced the legislation with Reps. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and Tom Tiffany, R-Wis.

President [Bill] Clinton delinked trade from human rights with China in 1994. Since then and “under successive Administrations, including now under the Biden Administration -- the Chinese Communist Party has gotten a pass for its gross human rights violations while benefiting tremendously by stealing American jobs and growing into the economic superpower it is today,” Smith said in a news release March 22 announcing the bill.

“Over the last two decades, we’ve seen America’s manufacturing sector suffer while the elites in China’s Communist Party have become richer, more ruthless, and more dangerous than ever as they engage in systematic human rights abuses, slavery, and genocide," Tiffany said.

"Now more than ever, we must stand up to China’s crimes against Uyghurs and Tibetans, and its destruction of democracy in Hong Kong. We cannot continue to allow China to act with impunity and undermine the rules-based order by cheating at the expense of other nations," Suozzi said.