How will China stimulate the economy and approach the Trump administration? Every March, China reveals its GDP growth target and economic, political, and foreign policies for the year during the National Two Sessions. The policies will define the overall operations environment for American companies in China and shed light on how US-China relations will evolve.

The US-China Business Council (USCBC) welcomes the opportunity to submit comments to the Office of the United States Trade Representative regarding unfair and non-reciprocal foreign trade practices as part of the administration’s work pursuant to the America First Trade Policy presidential memorandum and the Reciprocal Trade and Tariffs presidential memorandum.

On March 5, Premier Li Qiang opened the annual National People’s Congress by delivering the Government Work Report. The report was released in tandem with the National Development and Reform Commission’s draft plan for economic and social development and the Ministry of Finance’s draft central and local government budgets.

The Trump administration’s approach to trade with China is a tangled web of existing and potential future trade actions. While there has not been a coordinated effort to clarify exactly how the administration will roll out new actions, the threat still looms.

Senior Chinese policymakers are once again signaling their embrace of the foreign business community with a new action plan for boosting foreign investment in China. The plan marks a focused government effort to incentivize more foreign participation in the China market and identifies a range of investment opportunities in mostly services sectors.

The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference will begin on March 4, followed by the National People’s Congress (NPC) on March 5. Together, these meetings—known as the “two sessions”—serve as China’s most important annual political event, shaping the direction of national economic and social policy.

China has developed a sophisticated set of retaliatory tools that it is utilizing with greater frequency and severity as trade and technology competition with the United States intensifies. Policymakers in China do not publicly define these tools as intrinsically retaliatory.

Late last year, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) released a draft implementation plan for the Regulations on Fair Competition Review (RFCR)—a regulatory overhaul reflecting a decade-long push to ensure that government policies are non-discriminatory and comply with fair competition principles.