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ii. if the President certified that the country concerned had instituted a free emigration policy;
iii. if neither of the above applied MFN status was still possible if the President requested a waiver on an annual basis by certifying that progress was being made towards free
emigration.
6 Option i. above has been used to grant Eastern European countries full MFN status. Option ii. has apparently never been used as it is not seen as appropriate politically. As for option iii. if the President makes a certification the US Congress have 90 days to disapprove the certification by a 2/3 majority. If that happens the President can then veto the disapproval which in turn can be overridden by a 2/3 majority in Congress.
But, as Mr Robinson said, running the full course of option iii. is the nuclear option, not to be used if at all possible.
Since Tiananmen Congress have pushed the process as far as the Presidential veto in the knowledge that the President would be guaranteed to veto Congress's rejection of the certification.
7 However already in 1992 there were signs of compromise. The form this is likely to take is for the Congress to try to achieve a stand-alone bill which
bill which allows for selectivity
for selectivity of action (although this is proving extremely difficult to define) short of full withdrawal of MFN status.. With the election of President Clinton a new bill seems inevitable, not least because Congress can no longer rely on a Presidential veto.
8
As for
for the feasibility of threat of withdrawing MFN Mr Robinson's view was that it was now a hollow threat to withdraw MFN as China was the major American supplier of cheap manufactures; to quote Mr Robinson MFN withdrawal would have to be accompanied by cancelling Christmas.
Linkage between China's & Taiwan's GATT application
9 Mr Robinson regarded it as unavoidable that there would be a close linkage between the two GATT accession processes.
US/China agenda
10 The contentious issues in the US/China relationship at present are:
human rights;
proliferation issues: particularly nuclear technology and
missiles;
- trade issues: including market access and transparency (on which there is a 301 procedure), intellectual property (on which there is a Special 301 procedure). This finds wider expression in a concern about the US$ 12 billion trade deficit with China.
11
In addition there is a problem over prison-made goods. In Mr Robinson's view the substance of this issue is suspect, but the political importance is real enough. He sees this as a
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