WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of 101 U.S. lawmakers launched a new attempt on Thursday to pass legislation on China's yuan currency that cleared the House of Representatives last year but then died in the Senate.
The bill would clear the way for the Commerce Department to treat undervalued currency as a subsidy under U.S. trade law.
That would allow companies, on a case-by-case basis, to seek higher countervailing duties against imports from China that compete with U.S. production.
"What we are doing is adding weapons" to the U.S. government's arsenal of tools to deal with currency manipulation, said Representative Sander Levin, a Michigan Democrat who spearheaded last year's drive for the bill when he was still chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said he was introducing a similar bill in the Senate.
"Currency manipulation plain and simple is a form of subsidy ... When China manipulates its currency, that's not competing, that's cheating," Brown said. (Reporting by Doug Palmer; editing by Anthony Boadle)