Mark Wu

Gish Jen has made a literary career in part from writing about the experiences of Chinese-Americans. During a lunchtime talk at Harvard Law School (HLS), she discussed her latest book, “The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap,” making the case for the sociological and cultural patterns that influence many aspects of identity...Jen got support for her theory during her March 29 talk from a small panel of speakers that included HLS Assistant Professor Mark Wu and Joseph William Singer, Bussey Professor of Law, who gave many pit-versus-flexi examples in business, mental health, and family.

(Translated from Spanish.)...Mark Wu, a professor at Harvard Law School, told BBC World, “Whether you agree with President-elect Trump’s tactics or not, the U.S. does indeed face a number of serious trade problems with China.” “These include China’s use of subsidies for certain sectors, China’s dumping of its excess capacity of its steel products overseas, and China’s imposition of export restraints on certain raw materials. These benefit Chinese producers at the expense of American firms and workers.” For the Harvard scholar, the key issue is that China’s economy is structured in such a way that not all trade problems can be dealt with effectively through litigation at the WTO. “The crucial question is: What is the best way to deal with these problems to ensure that China does not get a disproportionate share of the gains from trade at the expense of the United States?” “The incoming Trump Administration’s view is that only by taking a harder line and raising the threat of a trade war will China change its practices.”

The makeup of President-elect Donald Trump’s trade team suggests he wasn’t joking when he promised voters to shake things up. On the campaign trail, Trump portrayed an America that has been shortchanged by bad trade deals and unscrupulous trading partners, leading to the hollowing out of the nation’s manufacturing sector. He promised to label China a currency manipulator and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico..."It’s clear this wasn’t just campaign rhetoric. The team that the President-elect has put in place was at the core of advising him during the campaign and has a clear playbook of what it wants to implement," said Mark Wu, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School who worked in the office of the U.S. trade representative under George W. Bush. "They’ve been pretty straightforward about their view of the status quo, which is that it undermines American economic interests."

The makeup of President-elect Donald Trump’s trade team suggests he wasn’t joking when he promised voters to shake things up. ... Since the election, Trump has taken aim at individual companies, warning General Motors Co. this week that it could face a "big border tax" if it doesn’t shift production to the United States from Mexico. And the track records of his top trade officials signal that his administration will take aggressive steps to boost exports, according to trade experts. "It’s clear this wasn’t just campaign rhetoric. The team that the president-elect has put in place was at the core of advising him during the campaign and has a clear playbook of what it wants to implement," said Mark Wu, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School who worked in the office of the U.S. trade representative under George W. Bush. "They’ve been pretty straightforward about their view of the status quo, which is that it undermines American economic interests."

Anniversaries should be happier than that on December 11th, marking China’s 15 years as a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). On that day, China expected to be unshackled from its legal label as a “non-market economy” and attain “market-economy status”. In the event, America and the European Union refused to give it the nod. On December 12th the Chinese reacted: see you in court...The full scope of what they can do is still legally uncertain. Mark Wu, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School, thinks that “what we’re seeing now is the opening salvo of a long series of litigations.” The underlying difficulty is that China’s particular type of capitalism makes it difficult to fit into a binary view of a market, or non-market, economy. “That makes it really hard for the WTO to adjudicate this type of issue,” says Mr Wu.

Way back in 2001, in China’s view, the United States promised it would treat the Asian country as a “market economy” starting in December 2016. President-elect Donald Trump indicated on Dec. 8 that “China is not a market economy,” and the issue could escalate already-tense trade relations between Beijing and Washington...Many others, including the U.S. government, argue that China’s economic transformation has not gone far enough. Mark Wu, a Harvard law professor, describes how a “China Inc.” has emerged. The Chinese government and the Communist Party have made strategic adjustments but remain actively involved in banking, energy and raw materials — and this allows them to implicitly subsidize other sectors of the economy.

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks to Mark Wu, assistant professor at Harvard Law School and a former U.S. trade negotiator, about how Trump would impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods, as he has promised..."There are certain things that would require additional congressional authority - for example, if he wanted to impose a blanket, across-the-board 45 percent tariff. But there's a number of different ways he could impose a tariff without going back to Congress. One would be to do this on a temporary basis, but only up to 15 percent for up to 150 days. Another would be to use existing trade remedies laws to go back at specific Chinese products on a case-by-case basis where the president or a U.S. industry is asserting that China is dumping its goods into the U.S. market or benefiting from illegal subsidies.

China has been shoveling excess amounts of steel onto global markets, playing a major role in driving down global prices and rankling American producers and government officials. Now a massive shakeup is taking place in China’s juggernaut steel industry, and the question on many people’s minds is what effect this will have on that country’s ongoing trade dispute with the U.S....“China has to deal with supply-side reforms on the one hand and on the other hand be sensitive to labor issues,” Mark Wu, assistant professor at Harvard Law School who specialized in international trade law, told Salon. “There’s a need to reform in China regardless of what types of trade measures are being imposed by China’s trading partners.” Consolidating the Chinese steel industry into a smaller number of players might lead to more effective planning, Wu said, comparing the move to having three airlines flying a specific route instead of 20. “Consolidating these players makes it easier for the Chinese industry to try to monitor overall supply in order to mitigate the scale of an overcapacity problem in the future,” he said.

Even before the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, question marks hovered over Europe’s ability to conclude the mammoth transatlantic trade deals under negotiation...Could free trade be dead? POLITICO asked experts, trade representatives and writers from across the political spectrum to weigh in...Mark Wu: A backlash against free trade and economic integration has been brewing in advanced economies worldwide. Europe is no exception, as the Brexit vote made clear. But the reaction we are witnessing is as much against globalization and immigration as it is against free trade. If the project is to move forward, political leaders will have to make a more convincing case about the benefits of greater integration.

Nearly two dozen countries have spent the last three years wrangling over a trade deal that will set the rules governing trade in services for much of the world for decades to come. Yet you’ve likely never heard of it. Other mammoth trade deals have triggered demonstrations across the EU and the U.S. while the so-called Trade in Services Agreement’s technicalities are being worked out largely without political pushback. In fact, it seems to have made it to the homestretch...“It has been more than 20 years since the conclusion of a major trade agreement on services has been made,” said Mark Wu, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in international trade law.

This week’s conclusion of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue marks the twilight of high-level engagement between the two trading powers under the Obama administration, leaving experts with questions about how best to tackle thorny policy squabbles with Beijing in the coming years...To the extent that results have been mixed in recent years, Harvard law professor and former U.S. trade negotiator Mark Wu said that the meeting is sometimes at the whim of the political circumstances surrounding it. “I think the success of the S&ED is highly dependent upon both the prevailing domestic politics as well as the relationship between the leading principles,” Wu told Law360. “It’s not surprising that at the end of an administration and also in the run-up to a critical Communist Party Congress that the outcomes at the S&ED are not as significant, but that’s not to say that the S&ED isn’t serving its role.”

U.S. opposition to language on financial services regulatory cooperation in the pending trans-Atlantic trade deal could be challenged by a new coalition of 14 European and U.S industry and business associations...Some Treasury Department officials are likely skeptical about whether trade agreements are the right forum to tackle to issue of regulatory harmonization, Mark Wu, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in international trade and international economic law, told Bloomberg BNA.

Our American colleagues previously reported on the decision by U.S. Commerce Department to hike margins on imports of Chinese-made cold-rolled flat steel. Washington has long opposed granting China market economy status (MES) and the decision is no surprise. This raised some interesting questions for us at Morning Trade: Is this the beginning of a new trade war, as the BBC suggests? Morning Trade brought together experts and lobby groups for a brief roundtable on the issue: Mark Wu of Harvard Law: “While the trade remedy decisions will be welcomed, the U.S. steel industry will still face a major competitive threat, and given the scale of this threat, more action will be required to address the challenge. [Yet, the U.S. decision] should not be misinterpreted as the start of a broader U.S.-China trade war. The timing of Department of Commerce’s decision was set months ago and it does not necessarily reflect the desire to escalate trade tensions in an election year.”

On Monday, Harvard’s Mark Wu published a paper titled “China Inc.,” highlighting how China’s unique economic structure could easily create tensions with other countries that are a part of the international trade regulator.

On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump has promised to do quite a few things that are beyond the powers of an American president, like billing Mexico for a border wall. But when it comes to foreign trade, his powers as president would come closer to his expansive ambitions....International trade laws limit the type of help governments can provide to companies, but the role of the Chinese government is particularly opaque, said Mark Wu, a professor of law at Harvard and a former United States trade negotiator in the administration of President George W. Bush. “China’s economy is its own beast, and it has a form that was not envisioned at the time these rules were created 20 years ago,” Mr. Wu said. “W.T.O. rules are not necessarily equipped to address all of the problematic aspects of that China Inc. system as far as American exporters are concerned.”