(Bloomberg) --

The Biden administration called on China to improve its protections of intellectual property, saying that the pace of Beijing’s reforms remains too slow.

“Stakeholder concerns remain about long-standing issues including technology transfer, trade secrets, counterfeiting, online piracy, copyright law, and patent and related policies,” the Office of the US Trade Representative said in an annual report released Thursday on the state of IP protection and enforcement among America’s trading partners. “China needs to complete the full range of fundamental changes that are required to improve the IP landscape in China.”

While there have been some positive developments, the administration continues to push for changes, a USTR official said in a briefing with reporters.

After a two-year tariff war, Washington and Beijing in early 2020 reached a so-called phase-one agreement, with the US reducing some duties in exchange for China pledging to address intellectual-property theft and buy $200 billion in energy, farm and manufactured goods along with services through December 2021. China fell more than one-third short of those promises.

Besides China, the US for the third year in a row has the same six other nations on its priority watch list of countries posing “particular problems” with respect to IP protection and enforcement. Those include Argentina, Chile, India, Indonesia, Russia and Venezuela. Concerns ranges from a lack of copyright enforcement in Chile and high levels of online piracy to trademark counterfeiting in India.

Thursday’s report is required by law and doesn’t necessarily reflect any new initiative by the Biden administration. The USTR can initiate investigations against countries on the watch list under section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. 

The Trump administration slapped the tariffs on Chinese products in 2018 after the USTR concluded that the nation engaged in widespread violation of US IP rights.

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