Washington ? Kansas Rep. Jerry Moran added his voice to the call for penalties against China if there is proof of currency manipulation to gain an unfair trading advantage.

The Bush administration has been building a case against China, saying it has a huge trade advantage over U.S. products because its currency is undervalued by as much as 40 percent.

If the yuan is undervalued, Chinese imports are cheaper for American consumers, while U.S. products are more expensive in China.

“The artificially valued yuan has allowed Chinese products to be sold in the U.S. for well below the cost of production, hurting our manufacturers and costing Kansans jobs,” Moran said in a statement released Monday.

Moran is backing a bill that would penalize Chinese products if the Treasury Department finds that nation’s currency is being undervalued. The penalty would be tariffs equal to the percentage of manipulation found. That bill has more than 75 co-sponsors, while a Senate bill to impose a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese products has gathered bipartisan support.

The trade imbalance amounts to American companies selling $1 in products to China for every $6 in Chinese products sold in the United States. Moran said the U.S. trade deficit with China was more than $103 billion in 2002 and was expected to surpass $120 billion this year.

The U.S. economy is still trying to emerge from recession but is sagging from the loss of 2.7 million factory jobs over the past 39 months.

“Our manufacturers can compete, but we need to level the playing field and eliminate unfairly priced imports from China,” Moran said.