We are concerned that China is breaking its trade commitments to the United States and other WTO partners, both by favouring its one state-owned financial services firm to the exclusion of American credit- and debit-card companies and by manipulating trade remedy investigations to unfairly restrict exports of American steel U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement, quoted by online news outlet marketwatch.com.
The US trade case connected to Chinas bank card business comes amid increasing frustration by US credit card companies about a lack of access to a fast-growing market. In June, Visa moved to challenge the monopoly of China UnionPay, calling for banks to stop using the state-owned companys network to process some international payment transactions.
The US is claiming the market-access restrictions violate trade rules, saying that China was supposed to have removed restrictions by late 2006 under terms of its joining the WTO.
Chinas electronic payments business, already worth several hundreds of billions of dollars, is expected to continue to grow rapidly. MasterCard predicted last week that China would overtake the US as the largest credit-card market by 2020.
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