The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent agency that works for Congress. The GAO watches over Congress, and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayers dollars. The Comptroller General of the United States is the leader of the GAO, and is appointed to a 15-year term by the U.S. President. The GAO wants to support Congress, while at the same time doing right by the citizens of the United States. They audit, investigate, perform analyses, issue legal decisions and report anything that the government is doing. This is one of their reports.

U.S.-China Trade: Opportunities to Improve U.S. Government Efforts to Ensure China's Compliance with World Trade Organization Commitments

GAO-05-53 U.S.-China Trade: Opportunities to Improve U.S. Government Efforts to Ensure China's Compliance with World Trade Organization Commitments

The complexity, breadth, and ongoing nature of many of the problems with China's WTO compliance demonstrate the need for a cohesive and sustained effort from the key U.S. agencies to effectively monitor and enforce China's implementation of its commitments. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), and the Departments of Commerce, State, and Agriculture (USDA) have coordinated on policy issues and increased staff resources to enhance their capacity to carry out these efforts. However, there are three areas in which we noted that these key agencies should take steps to improve their efforts and maximize the effectiveness of the resources allocated to the task of securing the benefits of China's membership in the WTO. First, although U.S. government efforts to ensure China's compliance emphasize high-level bilateral engagement, we recommended that USTR take steps to maximize the potential benefits of the WTO's annual multilateral review of China's compliance, referred to as the Transitional Review Mechanism (TRM). Second, to more effectively plan and measure results, we recommended that each of the key agencies improve performance management of their China-WTO compliance efforts. Third, we recommended that, in an environment of high and regular staff turnover, the key agencies should direct additional management attention to ensuring that staff have an opportunity to acquire training relevant to their China-WTO compliance responsibilities.