Word: mfn
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Despite the rumble of growing congressional protest, Bush went ahead and renewed China's most-favored-nation trading status again this year. As he pointed out last week, MFN is not really a favor but the "ordinary basis of trade," a set of low tariffs that the U.S. grants to more than 100 countries. Bush veered into hyperbole, however, when he claimed that China is such an important power that it can affect not only the stability of its region but the "entire world's peace and prosperity." And, he went on, his extension of MFN was a "policy that...
Critics in Congress are pushing the other way, trying to reverse Bush's policy in order to punish Beijing for its brutal treatment of pro-democracy students and its continued repression in Tibet. Senate majority leader George Mitchell introduced a bill that would end MFN in six months unless Beijing shows more respect for human rights, stops using prison labor to produce export goods and curbs its overseas sales of ballistic missiles and nuclear technology...
Democratic presidential hopeful Paul E. Tsongas criticized President Bush's benevolent Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) trade policy towards China Sunday night at the Harvard-Yenching Institute during a memorial ceremony for those killed at the Tiananmen Square massacre...
...talked to people who have come over from China recently, and they say the situation today isn't any better than a couple years ago. The government will crash anyone showing protest this year," Haiching said. "We need to ask the United States to renew MFN but attach conditions including the release of prisoners, the freedom of speech and assembly...and a stop to the harassment of students...
Under Gorbachev, the U.S.S.R. has fulfilled the one explicit condition that Congress laid down for granting MFN status to the Soviet Union when it passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment in 1974, which was intended to permit freer emigration. In 1989, 71,190 Jews left the country. As recently as three years ago, a mere 914 emigrated. However, congressional leaders of both parties have raised a new condition: movement toward granting Lithuania's demand for independence from Moscow...