Published August 26, 2019
China should no longer be given the leeway of a developing country, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove said Monday.
Appearing on “America’s Newsroom” with anchors Sandra Smith and Jon Scott, Rove said rules the World Trade Organization (WTO) has in place were developed in the “early 1990s, when intellectual property and technology were not the centerpiece.”
In a Monday morning news conference with President Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron made the case for modernizing those rules to help combat intellectual property theft on behalf of the Chinese.
“The problem is respecting intellectual property, dealing with excess capacity, which sometimes unbalances some world markets, and the ability to deal rapidly with conflicts we may have and with unfair situations,” Macron told reporters.
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“So, we decided together yesterday morning ... to accelerate with a very realistic agenda, and to say we're going to change the rules of world trade so that everyone can have free and fair trade, balanced trade, and that the subjects which I've just mentioned, which have sometimes been bad for our economies, can be settled in an international framework,” he announced.
On "America's Newsroom," Rove said: “I hope the president heard that and takes him up on that because we do have a huge problem with China stealing our technology and it is better if the world says to China, ‘Stop it,’ than just have the United States do it.
“Macron today signaled that the other leaders of the G-7 were willing to stand by the president to modernize the WTO rules on intellectual property to explicitly end the Chinese practices.”
Ahead of the conference, the president claimed China had called "our top trade people and said, 'Let's get back to the table.' So, we will be getting back to the table and I think they want to do something."
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Senior White House Correspondent John Roberts later asked Trump if reports from China that it has “no plans on going back to where they were in terms of the negotiations this Spring on intellectual property, forced technology transfer, ownership” were efforts to “calm the markets and play for time.”
The president responded: “We’ll see, John. ... I think they want to make a deal very badly. I think that was elevated last night, very late in the night.”
On "America's Newsroom" Monday, Rove said two things need to happen.
“It’s happening to them just like it’s happening to us, and it is better having gotten them in the WTO to basically say, ‘OK, it is time for two things to happen: one is for us to modernize our rules on intellectual property -- which is exactly what Macron said -- and stop you from doing this," he said.
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“The other thing was we brought China in as a quote ‘developing country.’ Well, they’re no longer a developing country. They should no longer be given the sort of leeway that a developing country has to be more protectionist in their policies. They ought to be treated as a major economic power -- just like every member of the G-7 is.”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/karl-rove-china-should-not-be-given-leeway-of-a-developing-country