BEIJING — The landmark U.S.-China trade deal signed here Monday offers U.S. companies unprecedented access to China's 1.2 billion consumers and is good news for such bellwether California industries as technology, Hollywood and agriculture.
Over the long term, the agreement also promises benefits for U.S. Internet and telecommunications firms, the auto industry, banks and Wall Street. And it stands to hasten the economic integration of the two superpowers, giving them a growing commercial stake in a transpacific relationship valued at more than $85 billion.
"China's accession to the WTO is a very, very important guarantee to the rest of the world that they can expect certain things from China's economic and commercial behavior," said Robert Kapp, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, the nation's leading China business group.
One disappointment was the inability of the United States to win the right for American firms to acquire more than 50% ownership of Chinese telecom companies, a concession to powerful pressures within China against relinquishing control over that lucrative arena.
The biggest losers will be U.S. apparel and textile makers, which lost a battle to have restrictions on China's exports of apparel and textiles kept in place until 2010. China, which depends heavily on apparel and textile exports, succeeded in getting those quotas lifted at the same time as other WTO members in 2005.
"We are very disappointed in the agreement," said Doug Ellis, owner of Southern Mills and president of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute, which estimates the pact will cost the beleaguered industry 150,000 jobs, many of them in Southern California.
But U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky scored a huge victory for powerful U.S. tech firms such as America Online Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. by persuading China's Ministry of Information Industry to allow foreigners into the highly sensitive Internet industry.
"The forces of darkness in the Chinese telecom bureaucracies are going to have to slink under the rocks again," said Dan Rosen, director of corporate research and development for ChinaOnline.com, a Chicago-based provider of China research.
American business leaders hailed the WTO agreement as an eventual boon to the U.S. economy and a spur to Chinese economic reforms, with estimates that it could lead to a doubling of China's global trade to $600 billion by 2005. China is the United States' fifth-largest trading partner and ranks No. 11 for California, already a leading gateway for goods to that region.
