Alibaba comes back on US counterfeits blacklist

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is back on the U.S. government's annual list of "notorious markets" that sell pirated goods. The listing carries no penalties but will likely be an embarrassment for Alibaba, which has been trying to burnish its image in international markets.

On Wednesday, the Office of the United States Trade Representative dumped Alibaba back on its Notorious Markets List, which “highlights prominent online and physical marketplaces that reportedly engage in and facilitate substantial copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting.” This comes four years after the USTR had removed the Chinese e-commerce company from the list after it made some progress in combating fakes.

"There are a lot of victims here," including U.S. companies that lose sales to fakes and consumers who wind up with shoddy goods, said Stephen Lamar, executive vice president at the American Apparel & Footwear Association, which wanted Alibaba back on the list.

The Chinese giant has given the development a political twist, with Alibaba Group President Michael Evans claiming that the USTR’s decision leads the company “to question whether the USTR acted based on the actual facts or was influenced by the current political climate.”During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump blasted China for stealing intellectual property.

Evans claims that in 2016 alone, Alibaba doubled over 2015 the number of infringing product listings it proactively removed from its site. “It is therefore unreasonable for the USTR to have concluded that Alibaba is less effective in anti-counterfeiting than when it reviewed our efforts in 2015 and when it removed us from its list four years ago,” he said in a statement Wednesday.