WASHINGTON—The United States needs new legal tools are needed to be able to hold the Chinese Communist Party to account for anti-competitive threats against key American high-technology industries, to update existing tools that react once harm is done, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said on Thursday. Tai told a U.S. House Ways and Means Committee hearing that existing trade law tools are more aimed at protecting U.S. industries and companies after they have already been injured by illegal price dumping and subsidies or other unfair competition. “I would really like to strengthen the trade tools that we have to address the problems we have today,” Tai said, adding that many of the U.S. trade laws are nearly 50 or 60 years old. U.S. trade laws, with their backward-looking nature, have struggled to prevent damage to the U.S. steel industry as China has built up massive amounts of production capacity over …