Overview
- China’s Commerce Ministry, which announced the move Friday, launched two six-month investigations it describes as reciprocal to ongoing U.S. Section 301 cases.
- One review targets U.S. limits on Chinese goods and on U.S. exports of advanced technology to China, and the other examines barriers to Chinese green-energy products.
- The ministry said it could extend each probe by up to three months and warned it may take corresponding measures based on the findings, a step that could set up new tariffs or other trade actions.
- Section 301 is a U.S. law that lets Washington investigate alleged unfair trade and, if warranted, impose remedies, and it was invoked in early March to probe excess industrial capacity across 16 partners and imports tied to forced labor.
- The announcement followed Chinese concerns raised in Paris talks and at a WTO meeting in Cameroon, and several outlets cast the timing as positioning before Trump’s mid-May talks with Xi Jinping in Beijing.