After the historic WTO rulings against China’s unfair export resource practices rocked the world of international trade on the eve of the Spring Festival holiday, it seems that there is no letting up of tension between the US and China. February has already seen the announcement of the establishment of the US Trade Enforcement Unit, a new Obama-administration backed task force that will be charged with investigating unfair trade practices in contrivance of WTO policies, especially charges of currency manipulation. While the new agency is ostensibly focused upon all countries violating established international trade laws, it already seems clear that the main target of the new body is China. To escalate matters even further, American lawmakers and union groups have begun pressuring the administration to block the import of China-made auto parts, which they purport are benefiting from Chinese government manufacturing subsidies- and are hurting American manufacturers.

Despite all the accusations, American and Chinese trade analysts are skeptical of whether heightened enforcement- likely accompanied by new tariff barriers- are an advisable move on the part of the US, and many are also questioning whether or not China is guilty of any real wrongdoing- or has simply been playing the hand that it has. US trade negotiator Clyde Prestowitz believes that the US-China trade woes are more of a product of American dysfunction than Chinese malfeasence.

“[The Chinese] targeted, subsidized (through currency manipulation, tax preferences, and other means), protected, and even invested state money in these industries while [the] US government and business leaders largely failed to protest or counter these moves in any way,” he said. “These jobs could and would come back to America if Washington were to begin to respond tit for tat to the mercantilist game.”

Finance and economics professor Richard Grant at the Beacon Center echoes Prestowitz, seeing China’s currency practices as standard for developing countries and nothing malevolently out of the ordinary. “The currency complaints against China are purely instrumental, intended to serve protectionist political constituencies in the US,” he said, emphasizing that the charges have more to do with domestic politics than international trade policy. “Charges of ‘currency manipulation’ come mainly from politicians who need to please groups, such as trade unions and local manufacturers, who feel threatened by international competition.”

Likewise, a recent Xinhua editorial expressed the sentiment that US protective measures are more likely to backfire than succeed, given their past record. “The high-profile tire dispute in 2009 shows how a get-tough policy on Chinese exports has failed to get the wheels of the United States' economy moving after three years of practice,” the editorial stated. “A US tire association official told The Wall Street Journal recently that the tariffs which are supposed to cut US imports and increase jobs have done little of either, but raised prices for consumers.”