In mid-August, President Donald Trump asked US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, a Ronald Reagan administration trade hawk, to open an investigation into China's intellectual property practices. And the first public hearing on China's trade conduct is scheduled for Oct 10 in Washington.

As Lighthizer initiated the investigation, he seized the notorious Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974, which in the 1980s was used against Japan, and which Japan and the European Union regarded as a violation of World Trade Organization rules. Instead of free trade, it represents "aggressive unilateralism" and authorizes retaliatory tariffs.

Lighthizer draws from the highly partisan US Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, which was mobilized in the early 2010s amid the rise of China's indigenous innovation and foreign investment.