HONOLULU (Reuters) – Four senior U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday urged President Barack Obama’s administration not to make a hasty decision to begin free trade talks with Japan if that country should request this week to join negotiations on a Transpacific free trade pact.

“Japan’s inclusion would add dramatically new dimensions and complexities to the TPP (Transpacific Partnership) negotiations. For that reason, we urge you to closely consult with Congress and stakeholders well in advance of any decisions,” the group said in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

The letter came as government officials from around the region were gathering in Honolulu for the annual leaders meeting this weekend of the 21 member countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

Expectations are high that Japan could formally request at the meeting to join negotiations on the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) pact, a proposed regional free trade agreement that would include the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.

The letter underscores why Obama and other TPP members are unlikely to give Japanese Prime Yoshihiko Noda an immediate ‘yes’ if Tokyo does ask to join.

The USTR’s office provided assurance it would hold discussions on any Japan application.

“A bold decision by Japan to pursue a high-standard TPP agreement would cause us to begin, in close cooperation with Congress and with U.S. stakeholders, intensive consultations with Japan on the issue of Japan’s candidacy,” a spokeswoman for Kirk said.

HONOLULU (Reuters) – It’s an environmental plan for the Asia-Pacific region that even President Barack Obama’s harshest Republican critic could love: cut taxes paid by corporations and reduce market-distorting regulation.

But those two key elements of the U.S. “green growth” agenda for this weekend’s annual summit meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum are facing resistance from China, a world leader in clean energy technologies.

That could derail or weaken a key part of the APEC agenda that the United States has worked all year to advance.

The White House wants Chinese President Hu Jintao and other APEC leaders to pledge to cut tariffs on environmental goods such as solar panels, wind and hydraulic turbines, air pollution filters and sewage treatment pumps to 5 percent.

Obama also wants APEC to agree to address certain regulatory barriers that hamper trade in environmental goods and services sectors including air pollution control, sewage treatment, solid and hazardous waste management, nature and landscape protection and noise pollution control.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed, hoping it comes together,” said Karan Bhatia, vice president of global government affairs and policy at General Electric, one of the world’s largest wind energy companies and provider of other goods and services that could be covered by the pledge.

‘U.S. DOESN’T NEED TO DO ANYTHING’

WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (Reuters) – The United States will push China to take “concrete and measurable” steps to boost U.S. exports in high-level talks on trade irritants later this month, the U.S. government said on Thursday.

The annual U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, or JCCT, meeting on Nov. 20-21 “is an important opportunity to address and resolve key trade concerns with China,” U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson said in a statement.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will travel with Bryson to Chengdu for the talks just a week after President Barack Obama hosts Chinese President Hu Jintao and other Asia-Pacific leaders in Honolulu for an annual summit meeting.

Obama is expected to press Hu on China’s currency practices, which many U.S. lawmakers believe give Chinese companies an unfair trade advantage and has become an issue in next year’s presidential election.

But the JCCT is traditionally a forum for the United States to push for progress on an array of other Chinese policies that thwart U.S. exports and sales.

“Through this year’s JCCT, we are pressing China for concrete and measurable results on a number of significant issues including China’s policies on intellectual property rights, investment and innovation, as well as a range of sector-specific industrial policies,” Kirk said.

Last week, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis said the United States was “alarmed” by reports China was forcing foreign automakers to transfer valuable electric car technology to participate in China’s “New Energy Vehicles.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google, Microsoft, Citigroup, IBM, GE and other top-tier American companies on Thursday urged the United States to fight for trade rules that protect the free flow of information over the Internet.

The unveiling of principles hashed out by the companies over the last nine months comes at a crucial moment, Rick Johnston, senior vice president for international government affairs at Citigroup, told reporters.

While past trade agreements have largely focused on eliminating tariffs on manufactured and agricultural goods, “we’re now in an era where the economy is literally driven by the Internet. It’s a digital economy,” Johnston said.

The group’s report says future U.S. trade pacts must “reflect the new realities of the global economy: specifically, the contribution of the Internet toward economic growth, toward job creation and exports,” said Bob Boorstin, director of public policy for Google, which has battled Internet restrictions in China and other countries.

One dangerous trend is a requirement by an increasing number of governments for companies to locate data centers within a country’s borders in order to provide services, Boorstin said.

Such laws are discriminatory and contrary to the notion of cross-border trade, the coalition said in its paper, which also criticized actions “governments around the world” have taken to block access to information services such as Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and YouTube.

DIGITAL PROTECTIONISM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. software companies still have not seen a big jump in sales to China nearly a year after the Obama administration trumpeted new commitments from Beijing to crack down on use of pirated software, a U.S. industry official said on Tuesday.

“What I hear from people on the ground is that they had hoped and had expected to see more progress in terms of increased sales in China and that does not appear to have been realized,” Robert Holleyman, president of the Business Software Alliance, told Reuters.

Heading into the next U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting at the end of November, the industry wants U.S. officials to insist China fulfill its existing commitments rather than press Beijing for new promises.

“The existing commitments, if fully implemented, should dramatically increase the sales of legal software and begin to close the gap,” Holleyman said.

“I think right now, we just want to say ‘let’s see results’ from the commitments that have been made.”

The software group has been battling for years to increase sales in China, where it estimates that about 78 percent of the business software now in use is pirated.

It includes many of the biggest names in the U.S. industry such as Adobe, Apple, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft and Symantec.

WASHINGTON, Oct 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. Commerce Department on Thursday handed American manufacturer Whirlpool a victory over some of its fiercest foreign competition by slapping preliminary anti-dumping duties of up to 37 percent on bottom-mount refrigerators made in South Korea and Mexico.

“When foreign companies like Samsung and LG violate trade laws, they destroy the ability of United States producers to invest, innovate and create jobs here in America,” Whirlpool Corp. spokesperson Kristine Vernier said in a statement welcoming the decision.

The 100-year-old American company has 23,000 U.S. employees and manufactures bottom-mount refrigerators at its plant in Amana, Iowa. Its global workforce is 71,000.

Whirlpool accused South Korean and Mexican producers of selling the appliances, which have the freezer section below the refrigerator, in the U.S. market at unfairly low prices in a complaint filed with the Commerce Department this year.

The Michigan-based manufacturer also said its South Korean competitors receive government subsidies, but the Commerce Department denied duties on that front in an earlier preliminary ruling.

The United States imported about $881 million of all types of refrigerators from South Korea in 2010, up sharply from $601 million in 2009.

Imports from Mexico totaled more than $2.31 billion in 2010, up from $1.95 billion in 2009.

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) – The United States hopes to persuade China and other Asia-Pacific countries to agree on a deal to tear down barriers to trade in environmental goods and services when regional leaders meet next month in Hawaii, the top U.S. trade official said on Wednesday.

“What we’re pushing for is a voluntary commitment that would look at a basket of issues … and commit to kind of a combined tariff rate of 5 percent,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told a business group.

“It’s one of those (initiatives) that President (Barack) Obama thinks just makes sense. Every country is looking for the next-generation technology in energy. We want to share that within the region” by facilitating trade, he said.

While Australia, New Zealand and some others support the U.S. push, some of the other 21 members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum are resisting, Kirk said, without identifying any holdouts by name.

A trade diplomat, speaking on the condition he not be identified, said China would prefer to negotiate the issue within the World Trade Organization, where any concessions it makes on environmental goods and services could be balanced by gains it makes in other areas.

A trade case filed by the U.S. arm of Germany’s SolarWorld against lower-priced solar modules and cells from China also threatens to create friction before of the Nov 12-13 summit, with the U.S. Commerce Department due to decide by Nov. 9 whether to launch an investigation.

U.S. trade officials have expressed alarmed as well over reports Beijing is requiring foreign automakers to transfer cutting-edge electric car technology to participate in China’s market for “New Energy Vehicles.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican lawmakers aired U.S. grievances over subsidies, piracy and other Chinese trade practices on Tuesday, but said President Barack Obama must take the lead on tackling China’s exchange rate policies.

As the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee grilled Obama administration trade and Treasury Department officials, Republican leaders made it clear they would not pursue a punitive currency bill passed by the U.S. Senate.

The legislation, which calls for duties on Chinese products to offset an artificially cheap Chinese yuan, symbolizes U.S. concern about the loss of American jobs blamed on trade with China that is intensifying as the 2012 congressional and presidential election approaches.

The Obama administration has signaled concerns about the bill but has not taken a formal position on it.

“I think it’s a very dangerous policy,” House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, told a news conference. “The fact is the president of the United States ought to stand up and take a position.”

Boehner’s opposition could derail a bill that has strong rank-and-file support. Republicans control the House while Obama’s fellow Democrats control the Senate.

Echoing Boehner, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp urged the administration to tell Congress what it “should and should not do” to address concerns about Chinese trade and currency practices.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A top U.S. trade official on Tuesday criticized China for policies he said were “hobbling” American sales but did not ask for new legislative authority to confront Beijing.

“Many of these troubling policies reflect China’s strengthening of state control over its economy and a retreat from its initial strong push to liberalize markets in the first years after its World Trade Organization accession,” Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis said in remarks prepared for a congressional hearing.

Marantis told the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee the Obama administration was “working day and night” to address concerns ranging from widespread piracy and counterfeiting of American goods to Chinese subsidies and industrial policies that hurt foreign firms.

“Our approach is founded on proven, vigorous enforcement and results-oriented dialogue,” Marantis said, claiming the administration has already achieved some success.

The hearing comes two weeks after the Democratic-controlled Senate passed legislation to deal with Chinese currency practices that many lawmakers believe give Chinese companies an unfair price advantage.

The bill would allow the Commerce Department to impose countervailing duties on goods from countries with undervalued currencies to offset the price difference.

House Speaker John Boehner has refused to allow a vote in the Republican-controlled House on the currency bill for fear it could start a destructive trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

WASHINGTON, Oct 24 (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers critical of China’s trade policies will use a hearing on Tuesday to press the White House to lay out plans to confront Beijing, even as Republicans resist a bill to punish the world’s second-largest economy for its currency policies.

With bipartisan concern about the loss of American jobs to China already an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign, the House Ways and Means Committee hearing gives lawmakers a chance to blow off steam at Beijing and to grill top Obama administration officials on what the White House is doing.

“I look forward to hearing the administration’s plan for addressing China’s persistent barriers to U.S. exports and investment and exploring what should be done to ensure American employers and workers are treated fairly,” Committee Chairman Dave Camp said in a statement last week.

The hearing with U.S. Treasury Under Secretary Lael Brainard and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis comes just two weeks after the Senate passed legislation to push China to let its currency rise in value.

Many U.S. lawmakers contend Beijing keeps its yuan weak to gain an advantage in international markets.

But with House Speaker John Boehner refusing to schedule a vote on that legislation for fear it could start a trade war, Camp plans a broader inquiry into a host of Chinese policies believed to hurt U.S. exports and sales.

In addition to questioning Brainard and Marantis on the yuan’s value, the panel will dig into issues such as China’s subsidies to state-owned enterprises, forced technology transfers, discriminatory government regulation, poor enforcement of U.S. copyrights and patents and a multitude of other barriers to U.S. exports and investment.