US Secretary Lew Warns China on Antitrust Probes

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has written to the Chinese government warning that a recent spate of antitrust investigations against foreign companies could have serious implications for U.S.-China relations, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The newspaper said Lew sent a letter to Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang and said that China’s recent focus on foreign companies could devalue foreign intellectual property, citing people briefed on the contents of the letter.

The paper said the letter was sent in recent days. Representatives of the Chinese cabinet did not respond to requests for comment, the WSJ reported.

The U.S. Treasury declined comment when asked to confirm the report. “We regularly correspond with our international counterparts on a variety of issues,” a Treasury official said earlier.

At least 30 foreign firms, including U.S. companies such as Microsoft Corp and chip maker Qualcomm Inc have come under scrutiny as China seeks to enforce a 2008 anti-monopoly law that some critics say is being used to unfairly target foreign firms.

After July talks on the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, Treasury said China “recognized that the objective of competition policy is to promote consumer welfare and economic efficiency, rather than to promote individual competitors or industries, and that enforcement of its competition law should be fair, objective, transparent, and non-discriminatory.”

via CNBC

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza