The United States International Trade Commission released a report on China's intellectual property rights infringement against U.S. firms. To no surprise, the report describes how China's refuses, isn't capable to either enforce U.S. intellectual property rights and in some cases, outright steals them.

Infringement of intellectual property rights (IPR) in China reduces market opportunities and undermines the profitability of U.S. firms when sales of their products and technologies are undercut by competition from illegal, lower-cost imitations.

To make matters worse, the Chinese courts are a hydra of rules and for small companies it is simply too expensive to try to do anything about the latest rip off.

China also enacted indigenous intellectual property policies, which is a glorified way of requiring advanced R&D be done locally in order to be recognized. Imagine (the good news for U.S. workers), if the United States required all advanced R&D to be done locally and by Americans to be considered valid. That's what China is doing.

“Indigenous innovation” policies, which promote the development, commercialization, and purchase of Chinese products and technologies, may also be disadvantaging U.S. and other foreign firms and creating new barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI) and exports to China.

Shock of all shocks, the only ones who don't get U.S. trade policy is hurting American workers along with the economy are journalists & pundits.

"In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, more than half of those surveyed, 53%, said free-trade agreements have hurt the U.S. That is up from 46% three years ago and 32% in 1999.

Even Americans most likely to be winners from trade—upper-income, well-educated professionals, whose jobs are less likely to go overseas and whose industries are often buoyed by demand from international markets—are increasingly skeptical."

Evidence journalists are oblivious is the last paragraph. Why denial kicks in is beyond me. Don't they see the statistics and realize the jobs most targeted for offshore outsourcing are the advanced R&D, professional ones? I guess the entire occupational areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics don't count.

83% of blue-collar workers agreed that outsourcing of manufacturing to foreign countries with lower wages was a reason the U.S. economy was struggling and more people weren't being hired; no other factor was so often cited for current economic ills. Among professionals and managers, the sentiment was even stronger: 95% of them blamed outsourcing.

The most absurd thing is happening. Claiming to push exports, President Obama is planning on pushing a host of policies that are well documented to offshore outsource jobs and displace U.S. workers. On Obama's export council is Verizon, a notorious labor arbitrager. Ford, Disney, Pfizer (another notorious offshore outsourcer of advanced R&D), and Dow Chemical are also appointed.

Business Week:

He’ll have to push new trade agreements, higher quotas for skilled foreign workers, and tougher enforcement of intellectual-property rights.

On what planet, besides a made up one, does someone believe displacing a U.S. worker with a foreign guest worker helps U.S. workers get jobs? Of course firing Americans and replacing them with cheaper labor does not create U.S. jobs for American workers. Evidence of U.S. workforce displacement through global labor arbitrage is overwhelming. The top users of foreign guest worker visas are offshore outsourcers and even the GAO has documented the displacement and wage repression of U.S. workers.