International Law

Once Upon A Time: Looking for a U.S.-China Trade Narrative

By Stan

Once in a while, it’s fun to look at headlines and themes of international trade stories without getting into the substance. Call it light reading for the weekend in an area that is usually boring and overly techno-legal for most folks.

A recent series of decisions made by Beijing and Washington easily lend themselves to such a skin-deep analysis. These actions are, I would argue, merely business as usual in the international trade area. Nothing much to see, move along. I certainly have not been blogging about this “news,” aside from passing along a story or two on Twitter (FYI @chinahearsay).

I have the luxury of complete editorial control, though. Bloggers’ older, more professional cousins in the media sadly do not usually have such control, and when Mr. Editor tells them to go write a story about the latest trade announcement, the answer must be “Sir, yes sir!”

Sometimes a trade decision is only important to people in a particular industry, or marginally interesting to people in related service sectors (e.g. trade lawyers or consultants). Seriously, how many folks really care about additional duties put on narrow categories of steel or nylon? Consuming such news is an acquired taste.

But work is work, and our friends in the media need to at least dress up the news in a familiar narrative, something easily understood to anyone cursorily scanning the news on their Blackberry in the morning. Even better, a flashy headline that supports that narrative with aggressive language can be added by an uber-helpful editor at a later stage of the writing process.

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Post tags: anti-dumping, associated press, bloomberg, countervailing duties, department of commerce, media, ministry of commerce, shanghai daily, trade subsidies

Full post as published by China Hearsay on April 25, 2010 (boomark / email).