Comment from Peter Manno, The George Washington University Law School

It is necessary to hold China accountable for illegal subsidies it provides its manufacturers. However, past history has shown that China will only reform its actions on a case-to-case basis. This is a judicially inefficient and uneconomical method at attempting to influence reform in China’s use of subsidies. China continues to subsidize other entities and has even begun to hide their subsidies by placing them in local and provisional budgets, making them more difficult for other WTO Members to find. This is reflected in the eighty-plus specifically-listed policies at issue here in this case. This leads to the conclusion that China is unlikely to change its subsidies programs on a national level, but rather will only address the issues as they arise through complaints in the WTO by other Members. Even then, when China “complies” with the WTO recommendation, there is a strong likelihood that it will simply hide the same or similar subsidies, making them difficult for the US to find. In addition, recent years have brought about increased number of WTO cases regarding prohibited and actionable subsidies worldwide. Despite this trend, these cases have not seemed to impact whether countries in fact stop their use of the challenged subsidies, given the increasing number of subsidies cases at the WTO. Specifically, there have been a number of cases against China in recent years, yet China continues to provide prohibited and actionable subsidies to its manufacturers. This leads to an uneven playing field between countries’ exported products.