The United States government continues to monitor the adherence of China to a bilateral agreement signed in September 2015 to refrain from conducting or knowingly supporting cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property with the intent of providing competitive advantage to companies or commercial sectors. The US Government had reportedly begun developing a package of economic sanctions last fall against Chinese entities and individuals who have benefited from corporate and government or government-sponsored cyber theft of US trade secrets, according to Western press reports. Some US industry executives, however, have raised concerns about the risk sanctions present to the competitiveness of US firms operating in China, according to recent press reports.
US President Barack Obama's sanction authority in this case is derived from an executive order signed in April against entities engaging in significant malicious cyber-enabled activities. Developing effective sanctions against Chinese individuals and large, global Chinese companies, however, requires caution given the lucrative trade and investment relationship between China and the US, concerns of targeted retaliation, and the preservation of broader international cooperation between the two countries.
In this dashboard Knoema provides detailed data on the structure of US-China trade and investment and recent trends.
Sources: U.S. Trade and International Transactions, Annual, Quarterly & Monthly Series, August 2015; UN Comtrade: Merchandise trade by Commodity, HS12, 2015; Foreign holdings of U. S. Treasury securities; China Global Investment Tracker, June 2015.