A recent State Council notice that calls for deepening reforms across the Chinese bureaucracy—“Fang Guan Fu” reforms for short—outlines Chinese government plans to improve its business environment.

Brunswick Group conducted a survey to assess the impact of US-China trade tensions on consumers in the United States and China. As a result of the trade war, Brunswick finds that Chinese consumers are changing their spending habits to avoid buying American products and US companies are seen as less favorable. Despite worsening consumer opinion overall, both American and Chinese consumers support bilateral trade and remain optimistic that a trade deal can be made.

Key findings

On Monday, August 5, the Treasury Department officially labeled China a currency manipulator. Though frequently threatened in political election cycles, this is the first time the designation has been imposed since China, South Korea, and Taiwan were cited in 1994 by the Clinton administration. The designation is mostly symbolic, as many of the actions taken by the Trump administration to date, such as implementation of tariffs, go beyond the remediation actions enumerated in US law.

In July of last year, several arms of China's government released the first in a series of documents detailing the country’s latest national crime reduction campaign, encouraging stronger enforcement of existing laws and regulations. While several similar initiatives have occurred in the past, many US companies and risk management experts note that consistent rule-of-law type enforcement is the new normal.

On July 20, China announced 11 opening measures for its financial services industry. While they have been portrayed in the media as game-changing, very few of the openings are in sectors that US financial services companies are interested in. For those measures in sectors of interest, the reforms could lead to real openings only if China removes the underlying regulations and requirements that ultimately act as barriers to entry.

To understand how American companies are dealing with challenges presented by China’s data regime, the US-China Business Council conducted a month-long series of interviews with multinational enterprises across the automotive, financial, pharmaceutical, ICT, and service industries to learn how they are responding to cross-border data flow, data localization, and data security issues.

On July 31, US-China Business Council (USCBC) President Craig Allen testified before the US-China Economic Security Review Commission (USCC) on US companies’ access, risks, and opportunities in China’s health market. His testimony was part of a full day of hearings titled “Exploring the Growing US Reliance on China’s Biotech and Pharmaceutical Products.”