In Car Country, Obama Trumpets China Trade Case - New York Times

CINCINNATI â€" In a vivid display of the powers of incumbency, President Obama on Monday filed a broad new trade case against China at the World Trade Organization, announcing the action in this industrial battleground where Mitt Romney has pressed his argument that the president has not done enough to protect American workers.

Administration officials said that the W.T.O. case, which charges China with unfairly subsidizing exports of cars and auto parts, was months in the making. But the timing, eight weeks before the election and days after Mr. Romney had renewed his attacks on Mr. Obama for his trade policy toward China, gives it potent political resonance.

On a day in which security and trade policy were inextricably mixed with the presidential campaign, the Chinese government, hours after word of the American action began circulating in Beijing, announced that it was filing its own W.T.O. case, alleging unfairness in how the United States calculates the penalty tariffs in anti-subsidy cases.

The timing appeared to be coincidental. But an announcement earlier in the day that the United States and Japan had reached a major agreement to deploy a second advanced missile-defense radar on Japanese territory prompted immediate criticism in China.

Speaking to supporters in a state heavily dependent on the auto industry, Mr. Obama drew an explicit link between China’s trade policies and the economic travails of voters in this closely contested region. By giving its exporters $1 billion in illegal subsidies from 2009 to 2011, the administration said, China is hurting American manufacturers and encouraging companies to move their production to China.

“These are subsidies that directly harm working men and women on the assembly lines in Ohio and Michigan and across the Midwest,” Mr. Obama said at rally in a hillside park here. “It’s not right; it’s against the rules, and we will not let it stand.”

After a week of anti-American violence in the Middle East that threw Mr. Romney off stride and left Mr. Obama potentially vulnerable to criticism, the focus on China put the candidates back on familiar ground, with a reliably populist theme that allowed each to try out new lines showcasing their toughness and caricaturing the fecklessness of the other.

Mr. Romney has long said he would be tougher on China than Mr. Obama. He responded on Monday to the W.T.O. action by declaring that Mr. Obama had done “too little, too late” to curb China’s unfair trade practices. The latest case, he said, was little more than a political stunt, failing to compensate for the Obama administration’s refusal to take other actions, like labeling China a currency manipulator.

“The president may think that announcing new trade lawsuits less than two months from the election will distract from his record,” Mr. Romney said in Los Angeles. “But American businesses and workers struggling on an uneven playing field know better.”

Mr. Obama repeated his charge that it was Mr. Romney who had sent jobs to China through his zealous practice of “outsourcing” at Bain Capital. Mr. Romney, he said, also profited from investments in Chinese companies. “Ohio,” the president declared, “you can’t stand up to China when all you’ve done is send them our jobs.”

The new trade case is further evidence of how Mr. Obama, after early attempts at accommodation with Beijing, has stiffened his approach to China. It was the ninth trade action that the administration has brought against China, with the highest profile ones coming this year.

The administration’s timing, however, hardly appeared accidental. It was the second China trade action announced by Mr. Obama on the eve of a campaign visit to Ohio, where the auto-parts industry employs 52,400 people. Last July, just before he flew to Toledo, home of a Jeep Wrangler factory, the White House filed a complaint against Beijing for levying $3.3 billion of duties on American automobiles.

“It’s not as if because we’re in the midst of an election that we should wait until next year to take these steps on behalf of American workers,” Joshua Earnest, the deputy press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One.

The United States trade representative, Ron Kirk, said his staff had been investigating China’s auto subsidies for “quite a while,” adding in a conference call, “We have no knowledge of the president’s travel schedule.” He said the United States would vigorously defend itself from the Chinese case on antitariff penalties.

The Obama and Romney campaigns are amplifying their remarks in tit-for-tat political advertising that focuses on China â€" Mr. Romney’s accusing the president of repeatedly passing up chances to get tough on Beijing; Mr. Obama’s asking incredulously, “Mitt Romney tough on China?” and reciting the charges of outsourcing and investments in Chinese companies.

Bashing China is a tried-and-true campaign strategy for both parties, particularly in swing states like Ohio, where a heavy loss of manufacturing jobs has coincided with a surge of Chinese-made auto parts into the United States.

But for Mr. Obama it is a notable shift from 2008, when he modulated any anti-China talk, in part because jobs were not as central an issue then and in part because his foreign-policy advisers warned him that if he made China a punching bag, he would spend his first year as president repairing the damage.

Once in office, however, aides said Mr. Obama became frustrated by what he views as China’s refusal to play by the rules. In the fall of 2009, he imposed a tariff on China for dumping tires into the American market. This was the most conspicuous of a stream of trade actions, covering goods from a specific category of flat-rolled steel to chicken broilers.

“We’ve brought more trade cases against China in one term than the previous administration did in two â€" and every case we’ve brought that’s been decided, we won,” Mr. Obama said, noting that Mr. Romney warned that the tire case would be bad for American workers. The president claimed it created more than 1,000 jobs.

Mr. Romney is emphasizing another type of trade enforcement in which he says Mr. Obama is lacking: labeling China a currency manipulator for keeping its currency artificially undervalued. In his campaign ad, a narrator says: “Seven times Obama could have stopped China’s cheating. Seven times he refused.”

The Treasury Department has consistently declined to designate China for manipulation. Senior officials argue that to do so would only make matters worse by provoking a nationalist backlash that could lead the Chinese authorities to tighten their controls again. They note that after persistent pressure by American officials, China began relaxing the renminbi in 2010, and it has risen modestly against the dollar.

Mr. Romney, however, has declared he would label China a manipulator on his first day in office â€" a threat that rattles free-trade proponents. Mr. Romney also says he would be tougher than Mr. Obama on issues like intellectual property rights.

“If I had known that all it took to get him to take action was to run an ad citing his inaction on China’s cheating, I would have run one a long time ago,” Mr. Romney said to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing, and Michael Barbaro from Los Angeles.