February 26, 2010.   We at CustomsReference wish to thank all our loyal and constant clients and friends for your patronage and continued support. We thank those who forwarded their ideas and  thoughts and thanks to our very special advisor in Redondo Beach who was always there for us, encouraging us every step of the way.  CustomsReference will be shut down this weekend.

February 25, 2010  WTO.  Global trade contracted by about 12 percent in 2009 but has started to pick up, the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) stated yesterday.  WTO Director General Pascal Lamy said the Organization had revised its previous estimate of a contraction of about 10 percent in 2009 but gave no forecast for 2010.  "World trade has also been a casualty of this (global economic) crisis, contracting ... by about 12 percent in 2009," Lamy said during a visit to Brussels, calling it a huge drop and the sharpest decline since the end of World War Two.  Asked about world trade in 2010, he declined to give any figure but said:  "Certainly there is a pick-up. Whether this pick-up is short term ... or whether this is sustainable ... is difficult to say but we certainly are picking up."

February 24, 2010  WTO.  World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy said it was "too early" to call ministers to a meeting for a new global trade pact push. Lamy had previously said a breakthrough was needed by the end of Q1 to meet this year's deadline for reaching an agreement. The Doha Round of negotiations began in '01 but disagreements over agriculture subsidies and tariffs derailed the talks.

February 23, 2010  Pacific Rim.  Senior officials from Pacific Rim economies accelerated their efforts Monday to seek ''possible pathways'' to a region-wide free trade zone, but fell short of reaching any consensus except to continue necessary work. After a meeting in Hiroshima, where Japan formally took up its chairmanship of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum for 2010, a Japanese official said, ''We already have very sensible analytical studies but also have lots of issues that require further discussions.'' The two-day talks between the 21 APEC members came ahead of a series of ministerial meetings scheduled this year and centered on preparatory dialogues to lay the groundwork for APEC leaders to issue an annual joint statement at their summit in November in Yokohama. Their priority issues also include making efforts to develop a strategy that would ensure economic growth in APEC as a whole, while the forum, established in 1989, assesses the extent to which its developed members have achieved its Bogor Goals of trade and investment liberalization, set 16 years ago.

February 22, 2010  Canada and U.S.  Canadian politicians have long complained about the challenges of getting their voices heard in America’s halls of power. But for seven Canadian premiers, there’s no longer any reason to complain.  Armed with arguments and statistics in favor of free trade, and employing a bit of Canuck charm, Canada’s provincial leaders got an enthusiastic welcome this weekend from U.S. state governors who generally endorsed calls for stronger cross-border ties and commerce. By the end of the premiers’ first-ever meeting Saturday with the National Governors Association, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was singing a gravelly voiced rendition of O Canada. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour proclaimed the Canada-U.S. relationship as “breathtaking” and unique to the world.  And yet another governor, Minnesota Republican Tim Pawlenty, stressed the importance of Canadian crude oil to his state’s economy. Pawlenty, touted as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012, said it would be “very ill-advised” for the U.S. to impose any sort of barriers to Canadian oil.

February 19, 2010  Canada and U.S.  The Honourable Peter Van Loan, Minister of International Trade, today made the following statement to mark the implementation of the Canada-U.S. agreement on government procurement: “Today marks an important day in Canada and the United States—the coming-into-force of the agreement on Buy American that we announced two weeks ago. The respective governments have ratified the deal, and it takes effect today. “The Government of Canada recognizes the deeply connected nature of our economies. This speaks to the need for a coordinated approach to enhance the economic prosperity of citizens, businesses and communities on both sides of the border. Under the agreement, the United States has waived the Buy American provisions, allowing Canadian companies to participate in a number of infrastructure projects being funded under the Recovery Act. Canadian provinces and territories also collaborated to develop the agreement, which also enjoys the full support of leading industry associations. The support and efforts of our partners in the public and private sectors, from the very start, made this successful outcome possible. Canada and the United States have agreed to offer each other permanent market access at the sub-federal level under the provisions of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement."

February 18, 2010  Dubai.  More than 90 per cent of the Gulf region's food is imported, according to officials. This has left the region's 36 million people at the mercy of global price shocks. According to the World Trade Organization, the GCC is the biggest importer of food in the world with more than 90 per cent brought into the region. Recent estimates by Business Monitor International show that food expenditure in the UAE reached $6.7 billion (Dh24.6 billion) in 2009. This market is forecast to grow by 2.67 per cent in 2010, making it worth $6.96 billion.

February 17, 2010  Mercosur and EU.  Brazil’s foreign minister suggested Tuesday that the thorniest subject in Mercosur’s negotiations with the European Union to reach an association agreement – agriculture – might be left aside for the moment until the general outlines of a pact are concluded. To be able to make progress and finalize the pact, given that the Doha round of international trade talks has hit a stone wall, the possibility of putting aside the subject of agriculture for the moment was discussed, since “the central problem of eliminating agricultural subsidies can only be resolved with a global plan” within the framework of the World Trade Organization. Mercosur’s agricultural powerhouses, Brazil and Argentina, are firmly aligned with other developing nations in demanding an end to the lavish government subsidies received by farmers in the EU and the United States.

February 17, 2010  Peru.  Peru will attend the World Trade Organization (WTO) consultation meeting to take place on February 18 in the city of Santiago de Chile.  A specialist of the Foreign Trade Deputy Ministry was authorized to travel to Santiago to attend the meeting representing the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism (Mincetur). The Mincetur is in charge of defining, formulating, leading, supervising and evaluating the international trading negotiations policies in accordance with the general policy of the government. In addition, it is responsible of watching over the fulfillment of the agreements signed by Peru in the WTO framework.

February 16, 2010  Yemen.  Canada has pledged to support Yemen's bid to join the World Trade Organization, less than a week after a major international conference looking at ways to bolster the country's government and tackle a growing insurgency within its borders.  Canada now becomes the fourth body to have promised support to Yemen after Australia, the European Union and China.

February 15, 2010  U.S. celebrates President's Day.

February 12, 2010  Vancouver, B.C. Canada.  The 2010 Winter Olympic Games begin Friday, February 12, 2010 and will end February 28, 2010.  Welcome to our city!

February 11, 2010  India.   India has joined the World Trade Organization's government procurement agreement as an observer, a first step to membership in the scheme regulating trade in goods bought by governments, a WTO spokesman stated yesterday.  The agreement, which 41 of the WTO's 153 members have signed up to, has been in the spotlight since U.S. President Barack Obama included controversial "Buy American" provisions in a stimulus package early last year, preventing many countries from bidding for public contracts under the program. India joins 22 WTO members with observer status. A further nine countries, including China, are already negotiating full membership. China, like many other states, promised to become part of the agreement when it joined the WTO. But the process is dragging on, and at a meeting on Wednesday of the WTO's committee on government procurement, members called on China to submit a revised offer as soon as possible, according to a participant in the meeting. The United States, European Union and others told China at the meeting that some of its draft legislation did not comply with the agreement, although China itself did not speak.

February 11, 2010 Canada and Nigeria.    Canada and Nigeria’s ambassadors to the World Trade Organization are likely to take on key roles in the group as it pushes for a new trade deal. Canada’s WTO ambassador, John Gero, is likely to become the next chairman of the general council, which runs the global trade arbiter between ministerial conferences, they said. Gero, an economist who was Canada’s intellectual property negotiator in the North American Free Trade Agreement and its chief negotiator at the WTO, has presided over the dispute settlement body, which rules on multi-billion-dollar trade rows as commercial tensions have picked up in the wake of the crisis. The person who is likely to replace Gero is Nigeria’s veteran ambassador, Yonov Frederick Agah. Agah, who has represented Nigeria at the WTO since 2005, is one of its most experienced diplomats, having headed several of its main bodies, such as the councils for trade in goods, services and intellectual property and the trade policy review body. Political leaders have called for the WTO to conclude the Doha round to open up world trade, now in its ninth year, in 2010. If that happens Gero would play a key role in organizing the meetings of ministers to seal the deal.

February 11, 2010 Brazil.  Brazil may break patents on U.S. goods in accordance with a World Trade Organization ruling allowing it to impose trade sanctions in retaliation for U.S. cotton subsidies, a Brazilian trade official said.  The WTO ruled in August that Brazil has the right to impose $294.7 million annually in sanctions against the U.S. because of subsidies paid to American cotton farmers, the second highest amount ever permitted by the Geneva-based trade arbiter. Brazil says that amount has since grown as U.S. payments to cotton farmers exceed a specific cap. Cozendey said Brazil can impose up to $830 million in sanctions, including $560 million on goods and the rest on intellectual property rights and services. Brazil’s government will take a decision this month on which of 222 eligible products it will impose the sanctions, Celio Porto, an agricultural ministry trade official said in an interview. The list of potential targets includes agricultural and textile products as well as U.S. exports such as electronics, cosmetics, ketchup, cars, chewing gum, medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.

February 10, 2010  Doha.  Concluding the protracted Doha Round of world trade talks this year is technically possible but will require some political will to overcome a few final obstacles, the head of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy stated. Lamy was speaking during a visit to Australia for talks with ministers, including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and trade groups to strategize about how the Doha Round might proceed.
At September's G-20 Conference in Pittsburgh, leaders called on trade ministers to conclude the Doha Round by December 2010. But the first meeting in four years of ministers from the WTO's 153 member nations in December concluded with no progress in the eight-year-old Doha Round, which has repeatedly failed to achieve its stated mission of opening developed- nation markets to imports of food from the developing world. Now, Lamy wants to gather energy for the 20% of the job that remains to be done in the lead-up to a meeting of leaders of G20 nations scheduled for June, building on what he said was the determination evident last year. This has to do with what remains on tariff reduction on industrial goods and in some cases on agricultural goods for some developing countries, he said. In particular, the U.S. wants more access for agriculture, manufacturing and services, particularly in emerging markets, while developing countries want the U.S. to reduce trade-distorting farm subsidies. Lamy said he believes India now wants the round concluded, as does the U.S., which he takes at their word.

February 9, 2010  WTO tariff base.  The World Trade Organization (WTO) mid last week introduced a new interactive service to search for tariffs for finding out information on Customs tariffs.  A WTO statement made available to the East African Business Week said the latest addition, "Tariff Analysis Online", "is the WTO's most versatile so far.   It includes the greatest available level of detail on the tariffs that WTO members have legally bound and the rates they are actually charging, summary import statistics, and the ability to analyze these interactively." The 'Tariff Analysis Online' draws on two WTO databases: the Integrated Database (IDB) of the tariff and import data, and the Consolidated Tariff Schedules, which contains WTO members' commitments on tariffs and agricultural subsidies. The facility also provides users with flexible search criteria and produces a range of analytical reports - the results of the searches - covering both tariffs and imports, in detail and summary levels.  Users can manipulate the analysis online and download and print the resulting reports.

February 8, 2010  Canada and U.S.  The U.S. and Canada settled a yearlong dispute over “Buy American” rules for U.S. stimulus spending, according to a U.S. trade official. The deal, which may be announced tomorrow, will allow use of Canadian products in many local U.S. projects funded by the stimulus program, said the official, who asked not to be identified because the accord hasn’t been made public. Canada also gets access beyond the stimulus to supply 37 states that signed up for the World Trade Organization’s government procurement pact. The U.S. gained pledges of long-term access to provincial markets in Canada, as well as to some local markets through September 2011 when U.S. stimulus spending expires, the official said. Buy American provisions approved in the $787 billion economic stimulus package a year ago mandated that all the steel and manufactured goods purchased with the funds be made in the U.S., or in countries with U.S. agreements on government procurement.  Projects at the local level funded by the stimulus were mostly limited to U.S.-made goods, drawing protests from Canada, which had supplied water, wastewater and other building projects in the past.

February 5, 2010  Philippines.  The Philippines has another chance to coax the European Union and the United States out of a liquor tax case as the three are again slated to meet for negotiations, World Trade Organization (WTO) documents show.  If this round of talks is successful in appeasing the two Western countries, the Philippines will be able to avoid the intervention of a WTO panel which has, in the past, ruled for the complainant. The EU, in a communique to the WTO dated January 27, requested to join US-initiated talks with the Philippines even as the Western economic bloc had declared an earlier round of negotiations a failure. The US called for "consultations" with the Philippines in mid-January, the first step in the WTO’s dispute settlement process. This came after the EU dropped similar talks with the Philippines and moved on to request the trade watchdog to establish a panel to decide the case. The two Western countries have raised issue over the Philippines’ allegedly discriminatory liquor tax policy, which levies a higher rate on imports. The EU cited Republic Act 9238, passed in 2004, which amended the National Internal Revenue Code by raising excise taxes for locally produced spirits to 30% and at the same time slapping a higher 50% levy on "most types of imported spirits." This, they said, unfairly crippled sales of imported liquor to the benefit of locally made counterpart goods. In its communique, the EU said: "[We] desire to be joined in the consultations requested by the United States ... The European Union’s request is premised on its substantial trade interest as an exporter of distilled spirits to the Philippines as well as its systemic interest in the correct application of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade." The Philippines, for its part, replied in a February 3 communique to say it "accepted the request of the EU to join the consultations." The Philippine delegation, in talks last October, said the different tax rates should not matter as the products do not compete with each other and cater to different markets. Several legislators have also filed bills proposing the uniform treatment of "sin" products, but these have yet to be passed by the 14th Congress which ends its term in June. Under the WTO’s dispute process rules, the US can likewise request for a panel to decide on the case if it deems talks a failure. Previous panels on three other liquor tax disputes -- all raised by the EU and US -- have ruled in favor of the two major exporters.

February 4, 2010  EU sugar exports.  The European Union approved exports of an additional 500,000 metric tons of sugar above an annual limit permitted by a World Trade Organization decision, defying calls from Brazil, Thailand and Australia to respect the quota. Brazil said yesterday it doesn’t rule out responding with a WTO complaint. The proposal to lift exports in the 2009-10 season drew no objections from EU officials by yesterday's deadline, stated Johan Reyniers, a spokesman for the Brussels-based European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm. Brazil, Thailand and Australia, the top sugar exporters, this week asked the EU to scrap the plan because its shipments of the sweetener would exceed the quota. The WTO in 2005 limited EU exports of subsidized sugar to 1.37 million tons following a complaint by the three countries.

February 4, 2010  Yemen and Canada.  A bilateral agreement has been signed with Canada advancing chances for Yemen to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). The signing of the agreement came following a three-year negotiation to be set the fourth one beside the European Union, China, and Australia within the framework of Yemen bilateral negotiations to finalize accession requirements.  The agreement, singed Wednesday in Geneva, includes tables of commitments setting ceilings of customs tariffs of goods items which negotiations revolved over within the commercial ties between the two countries.

 February 4, 2010  EU and U.S.  The European Union is seeking 311 million dollars (223 million euros) in sanctions on US imports in retaliation against US anti-dumping measures, a document on the WTO website showed Wednesday. The sanctions will "take into account the direct trade loss caused by the WTO inconsistent measures," as well other damage to EU trade, said the document on the World Trade Organization website.
Brussels is asking the trade body to approve either punitive tariffs of 100 percent on 311 million dollars worth of US exports to the EU, or a tax of 13.18 percent on annual trade of 477 million dollars in selected goods. In its complaint against the US, originally filed in 2004, the EU had targeted the way the United States calculates the degree of dumping, using a controversial and complex method known as "zeroing." Brussels argued that by applying the method, the United States increased its estimate of the degree of dumping in its markets. Dumping involves the sale of items abroad at less than the cost price in their domestic market.

February 3, 2010  CustomsReference.com.  CustomsReference.com announced yesterday that it would be closing its doors at the end of February.  CustomsReference thanks all their clients and friends for their continued support and good wishes.

February 2, 2010  Doha.  Representatives of key World Trade Organization (WTO) members that include India, China and US began three-month long Doha trade talks in Geneva yesterday to sort out problematic issues that have been obstructing the winding up of the Doha trade talks. The trade negotiators, who are working against a tight schedule, are expected to be involved in preparing the grounds for a high-level meeting that will be held in March. An official said that unless trade negotiators are able to sort out the problems with respect to agricultural and industrial goods among the WTO members, it would be tough to achieve the 2010 deadline set for the conclusion of the talks. Several global leaders, including the G-20 members have been pressing for completion of the talks in 2010.

February 1, 2010  Yemen.   The Republic of Yemen and World Trade Organization (WTO) held the 7th talks session on Yemen accession into the Organization in Geneva during 25-27 January. A delegation from the National committee for Negotiation with the World Trade Organization traveled to Geneva to participate in the 7th meeting. On January 27, 2010, Yemen and the US discussed Wednesday means of facilitating and accelerating the bilateral negotiations to complete procedures of Yemen’s accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO). The two sides affirmed the importance of holding a meeting of United States-Yemen Council on Trade and Investment (TIFA) in the coming two months to promote trade and investment exchange relations between the two countries.

January 29, 2010  EU.  The EU plans to export an extra 500,000 tons of sugar because world sugar prices have soared and European beet farmers have surpluses. The European Commission says the export of extra, unsubsidized sugar will not violate international trade rules. It says the measure is temporary. The EU's annual limit for subsidized sugar exports is 1.37m tons, under World Trade Organization agreements.  Brazil's sugarcane group Unica has told the EU not to exceed 1.37m tons. But the Commission's agriculture spokesman Michael Mann told the BBC that "the export limit doesn't apply" to the extra 500,000 tons, because this extra is unsubsidized sugar. He said that if sugar production costs were higher than the sale price, global competitors might argue that this amounted to an indirect EU subsidy.  "But the production cost is below the sale price," he said. "People on the world market are crying out for sugar and we've got too much of it."

January 28, 2010  WTO and Russia.  The U.S. has failed to respond to an offer to jumpstart stalled negotiations on Russia’s membership in the World Trade Organization, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said.  Shuvalov told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin today that he had proposed raising talks to the ministerial level during a September visit to Washington, according to a statement on the Russian government’s Web site. “So far we haven’t received any proposals on how we will conduct negotiations,” Shuvalov said at the Moscow meeting. Putin caused confusion last year when he announced that Russia was withdrawing its 16-year bid to join the WTO and would instead seek membership as part of a trade bloc with Kazakhstan and Belarus. Russia, the largest economy outside the Geneva- based trade arbiter, has differences with the U.S. over agriculture, intellectual-property rights and banking. Shuvalov said he told the American side that Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina are ready to clarify Russia’s joint bid. Entry into the WTO with two former Soviet republics doesn’t contradict the norms of the organization, according to Shuvalov.  

January 27, 2010  WTO.  The European Union complained Monday that a 10-month gap between separate World Trade Organization rulings over government subsidies to airplane manufacturers Boeing and Airbus could damage chances of a settlement. EU spokeswoman Christiane Hohmann said the EU was concerned that the WTO would only rule on its complaint that the Pentagon and NASA are indirectly subsidizing Boeing Co. in June, ten months after its September ruling that European loans for Airbus were illegal subsidies. Hohmann said the widening gap between the two rulings would "prove unhelpful if the EU and the U.S. arrive at a point where they wish to sit down and negotiate a solution." She also said the two case are so similar that the WTO's appeals body should hear them both at the same time. The WTO can allow a nation that has been harmed by unfair subsidies that damage trade to raise tariffs or impose other barriers to imports from an offending country or countries. In the Boeing case, that could see the U.S. impose charges on imports of French wines or Scottish sweaters.

January 26, 2010  U.S. and China.  World Trade Organization director general Pascal Lamy said trade disputes between China and the USA were inevitable considering the growing trade between the two economic giants. However, he indicated the WTO was well aware of the potential for explosive trade disputes that could affect global commerce and assured the world that “there is no risk of slipping into a trade war” as it was well-equipped to handle the conflict. Lamy likened the increasing tension to the USA’s stoushes with Japan in the 1980s and conflict between the USA and Europe throughout their recent trading history. “The question is not whether there is friction, the question is whether it is handled the right way,” Lamy said pragmatically.

January 25, 2010  U.S. and China.  A number groups are calling on the United States to challenge China's "firewall" before the World Trade Organization, as a bilateral row over cyber attacks on Google adds to trade tensions.  As President Barack Obama awaits answers from Beijing on the cyberstrikes, Washington is being asked to contest China's Internet censorship as a breach of global trade rules to which the Asian giant, as a WTO member, is subject. "The US can argue that China's 'Great Firewall' -- a system of filters and bottlenecks that effectively shutters the country within its own intranet -- is an illegal restraint on international trade because it bars foreign companies from competing, via the Internet, in the vast Chinese market," argues Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. The nonprofit US-based free speech group has petitioned US Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk, Obama's top trade official, to invoke World Trade Organization treaties to curtail China's censorship of the Internet. China's action to halt Internet commerce at its "borders" is akin to a government regulation requiring perishable agricultural exports from the US to sit for days on China's docks prior to trans-shipment to internal distribution facilities, Scheer said.  Kirk's office confirmed that it was discussing the issue with the First Amendment Coalition and other groups.

January 22, 2010  Australia, U.K. and Vietnam.  Australia and the UK have signed an agreement to support Vietnam with US$16.4 million towards maximizing the benefits of trade liberalization, including its commitments to the World Trade Organization. A five-year project, the second phase of the “Beyond WTO” program launched in 2007, will help Vietnam implement its commitments under WTO membership and other international and regional agreements. The project will focus on several areas including strengthening institutions of market economy, like state-owned businesses reform and land management, and helping the rural sector adjust to the impact of economic integration, it said. The Australian Aid Program committed AU$12 million ($10.9 million) to the plan, and the UK Department for International Development contributed ₤3.4 million ($5.5 million).

January 21, 2010  Philippines.  The World Trade Organization (WTO) has decided to form a panel that will decide whether Philippine taxes on liquor are indeed unfair to imports as alleged by the United States and the European Union.  The move came after the EU asked for such a panel for the second time, at a Jan. 19 meeting in Geneva. It was a request the trade watchdog had to automatically honor under its dispute settlement process. But the appointment of panelists will likely take longer than usual, an official said, as the WTO may first wait for a similar case -- recently instigated by the US against the Philippines -- to catch up to the EU complaint. Both Western economies allege that Philippine taxes on imported liquor are unfairly higher than those levied on locally made ones. The EU cited Republic Act 9238, passed in 2004, which amended RA 8240 (the National Internal Revenue Code) by raising excise taxes for locally produced spirits to 30% and at the same time slapping a higher 50% levy on "most types of imported spirits." Sales of imported spirits have declined since 2005 even as sales of local products grew by 8% during the same period, the EU claims. The US for its part alleges that the market share of its imports have been limited to just 5% since 2003.

January 20, 2010  U.S. and China. China is expected to implement changes that will allow foreign distributors to import audiovisual entertainment products in China without trade being narrowed by state-owned channels after it lost its dispute case against the United States at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The recommendations of the dispute settlement panel and the Appellate Body were adopted today by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. The dispute was brought by the United States over Chinese measures allegedly affecting US trading rights and distribution services for certain publications and audiovisual entertainment products. It dates back to April 2007 when the US requested consultations with China over measures that it said were restricting its trade in China. According to the WTO dispute summary, the alleged restrictions concerned imported films for theatrical release, audiovisual home entertainment products, sound recordings and publications. The US complained that some Chinese measures limited the right to import audiovisual entertainment products and some publications to Chinese state-designated and wholly or partially state-owned companies.

The US claimed that those measures presented possible inconsistencies with China’s obligations as a WTO member. In October 2007, the US requested the establishment of a panel, which was established by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body in November 2007. The WTO DSB comprises all WTO members and establishes panels of experts to consider disputes between members. It has the authority to accept or reject the panels’ findings and the results of an appeal. It also monitors the implementations of the rulings and recommendations given to the members found not compliant with their WTO obligations.

On 12 August 2009, the panel report was circulated to members. The report concluded that some Chinese measures were inconsistent with China’s WTO obligations as those measures were restricting foreign suppliers’ trade rights and did not consider that Chinese measures were contributing to protecting public morals. In particular, the panel found that Chinese measures preventing foreign-invested companies from engaging in “the wholesale of imported reading materials, the exclusive sale of books, periodicals and newspapers, and the master wholesale and wholesale of electronic publications” are inconsistent with China’s national treatment commitments under Article XVII of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The panel also found that “China’s measures limiting the distribution of audiovisual materials to joint ventures with Chinese majority ownership” are inconsistent with China’s commitments under GATS. The panel did not find grounds for some of the US complaints.

In September, China notified its decision to appeal to the Appellate Body and in October the US also notified its decision to appeal, both countries wishing to have “certain issues of law covered in the panel report and certain legal interpretations developed by the panel” reviewed. On December 21, the Appellate Body issued a report which upheld most of the panel’s previous conclusions. 

The Appellate Body is a seven-member group that decides on appeals made within the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. Appellate Body reports must be accepted by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, made up of all member governments, and afterward must be accepted by the states involved in the dispute.

On 19 January, during the DSB meeting, the US gave a statement and said that they were “pleased that the panel found in favour of the United States on the vast majority of our claims, and that the Appellate Body upheld each of the panel’s findings challenged by China.” The US expressed disappointment, however on the panel’s decision on sound recordings. The panel did not find China’s measures inconsistent with GATT 1994.
The Chinese delegation said that they were “pleased that, in many critical respects, the panel agreed with China and rejected a large number of the claims of the US.” The delegation also said that “the cultural product is naturally embedded with not only commercial values but also cultural values,” so “the administration of trade in cultural products should be different with the regulation of general goods,” and expressed disappointment over the panel’s decision not to uphold China’s claims on trade right issues and network music issues. The DSB adopted the panel report on this dispute on 20 March 2009 and on 29 June, China and the US agreed that “the reasonable period of time for implementation” would expire on 20 March 2010.

January 19, 2010  Taiwan.  Taiwan will undergo the second review of its trade policies since its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2002, but the results will not lead to any trade dispute lawsuits, an economics official has stated. The meetings for the second review will take place on July 5 and 7 this year, with the aim of promoting transparency of the country's trade policies and measures. Taiwan had its first WTO review meetings on June 20 and 22, 2006. At the meetings, China raised concerns over Taiwan's import restrictions on more than 2,000 Chinese products. Prior to the meetings, officials of the WTO Secretariat will visit Taiwan Jan.27-Feb. 4 to study Taiwan's current economic and trade development, as well as related policies and measures.

January 18, 2010  U.S. celebrates Martin Luther King. Jr's birthday.

January 15, 2010  U.S.  The United States yesterday filed a World Trade Organization complaint against Philippine taxes on alcoholic drinks it said discriminate against U.S.-made brands such as Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam. "We are going to the WTO today because we want to ensure that U.S. producers have access to their markets overseas," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement. The United States asked the Philippines for formal talks on an excise tax system it said taxes imported whiskey, gin and other alcoholic products 10 to 40 times higher than those made in the Southeast Asian country. The main U.S. alcohol industry group applauded the action. The United States is one of the largest exporters of distilled spirits, with worldwide exports averaging more than $1 billion per year from 2006 through 2008. The European Union has already mounted a WTO challenge against the Philippine taxes, which also hamper European-based companies such as Pernod Ricard and Diageo.

January 14, 2010  Google.  As BusinessWeek reported yesterday, "Google Inc.’s threat to pull out of China is the most visible reflection of U.S. companies’ growing disillusionment with the country nine years after it joined the World Trade Organization, business groups said. Washington trade organizations representing companies such as Microsoft Corp., Boeing Co., Intel Corp. and Cigna Corp., which all backed China’s entry into the WTO and fought off legislation to punish Chinese imports, say China is increasingly discriminating against them on government contracts and through unfair subsidies.

Google, owner of the most-used search engine, said Jan. 12 that it would end self-censorship of its product in China after attacks on e-mail accounts of human-rights activists. The Mountain View, California-based company said the move may cause it to close offices in the country. China agreed to cut tariffs, allow foreign investment in insurance, banking and express delivery and curtail subsidies as part of its agreement to join the WTO, which was completed in December 2001. Commerce between the U.S. and China soared to $408 billion in 2008, making China the second-largest U.S. trading partner after Canada, and foreign investment increased."

January 13, 2010  WTO, EU and Boeing.   The World Trade Organization is set to release a preliminary ruling on the European Union's complaint against the Boeing Co. in June. This is the counterclaim that the EU is making against Boeing on Airbus' behalf.  The WTO issued a preliminary ruling in September on Boeing's claims that Airbus has benefited from illegal government handouts. The WTO agreed in part with Boeing's allegations that its rival has an unfair advantage due to government backing of its commercial jet programs, including the A330 jet.  Airbus' parent, EADS, and Northrop Grumman could offer a tanker based off the A330 to the U.S. Air Force in its tanker contest. Boeing has said it wants the Air Force to take the WTO's ruling into consideration when it awards the $35 billion deal. The Pentagon has declined to do so, saying the ruling is preliminary and that Airbus' complaint is pending.

January 13, 2010  WTO.  The Doha round of World Trade Organization (WTO) talks could come to a deal by the end of 2011, the European Union’s designated trade commissioner said on Tuesday, stressing that he was “confident” of a good outcome. Last July, at the Group of Eight summit in L’Aquila, Italy, the world’s richest nations said they wanted the Doha round, which opened in 2001 in a bid to liberalize world trade and help poor nations develop, to reach a deal in 2010. “We agree on 90 per cent of the topics in Doha ... We are not going to tackle all the problems (of world trade) in the Doha round, there is still time afterwards,” he stressed. Talks on trade liberalization have stalled in recent years amidst a bitter row between the United States, China and India on agricultural subsidies. The European Commission, the EU’s executive, negotiates in the WTO on behalf of the bloc’s 27 members.

January 12, 2010  U.S. poultry.   The American poultry industry has urged U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk to "fully and resolutely pursue" a World Trade Organization (WTO) action against European Union rules that effectively block American poultry from the European market. The EU bans U.S. poultry that has been processed using chlorinated water, which helps control potentially pathogenic microorganisms and is considered safe and effective by U.S. authorities. The industry estimates that the policy prevents it from developing a market in Europe worth about $240 million for chicken and $60 million for turkey and duck. WTO rules require that sanitary measures must be based on sound science and risk assessments to make sure they are employed fairly, justifiably, and without discrimination, the industry leaders noted.  "The EU has conducted no risk assessment to justify the ban on U.S. poultry," wrote George Watts, president of NCC; Joel Brandenberger of NTF; and James H. Sumner of USAPEEC. "The EU has not been able to demonstrate nor justify why the use of pathogen reduction treatments is not scientifically acceptable and why a politically expedient decision should be acceptable," they wrote. "Pursuing the WTO dispute settlement process may not only prove to restore U.S. poultry exports to the EU but, equally important, will promote and reinforce the critical WTO principles that address the international rules of trade and will provide for a more predictable and fairer opportunity for agricultural exports to participate in the world market."

January 11, 2010  Canada and Yemen.  Yemen and Canada will sign a bilateral deal covering Yemen's accession into WTO - the two countries have discussed aspects of commercial cooperation between the two countries with Canada expressing interest in available investment chances in Yemen. Yemen discussed interest in achieving access to joining the international organization, pointing out to the improvement in investment environment in the country, welcoming Canadian investment in Yemen. Yemen stated that any Canadian investment would receive full support and care of the Yemeni government based on the Yemeni law of investment.

January 8, 2010  Russia.  With as much as 30,000 tons of American poultry in the pipeline to Russia, the government in Moscow imposed a ban on future U.S. poultry imports on New Year's Day. Russia joins the European Union in prohibiting the use of chlorine as an anti-microbial treatment in poultry production, which is commonly used in the United States. American poultry exports to Russia are the biggest component of U.S. agricultural exports to the former Soviet Union. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russia has grown to become American's tenth largest Ag export market for a total of $1.8 billion in 2008. Poultry was almost half of that amount. Losing another near billion-worth of exports to Russia over chlorine comes as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has also been unable to open the EU to U.S. poultry for the same issue. For trade disputes with the EU, complaints go to the World Trade Organization (WTO). But, Russia is not a member of WTO. In 2009, Russia accepted poultry from the U.S. under a quota lowered from 2008 levels. Russia's domestic poultry industry has improved greatly over the past few years, but experts say the country will still need U.S. birds to meet the demands of its consumers. The EU ban on bathing chicken in chlorine has been in effect since 1997. The US-EU dispute was a test case for the Transatlantic Economic Council, which was formed in 2007 to facilitate trade and business between the two economies. A plan to end the ban was vetoed by EU veterinary experts.

January 7, 2010  Canada.  Canada will join a World Trade Organization (WTO) complaint against China over its export restrictions on some raw materials, Trade Minister Stockwell Day stated yesterday. Canada is concerned that restraints such as export duties and quotas "are leading to trade distortions in the world market," Day said. "Such measures have caused uncertainty for Canadian producers. We hope that this WTO challenge will persuade China to end these practices." The WTO set up a dispute panel on Dec. 21 at the request of the United States, the European Union and Mexico. They argue that the restrictions give Chinese domestic industries an unfair advantage since they can buy the raw materials more cheaply. The raw materials concerned are bauxite, coke, fluorspar, magnesium, manganese, silicon carbide, silicon metal, yellow phosphorus and zinc. "The (Chinese) measures appear to violate rules on export restraints, as well as the commitment China made when it joined the WTO to not charge export tariffs on most materials," Day's office said in a statement. Canada is joining the dispute as a third-party participant, as have numerous Latin American, Asian and European countries.

January 6, 2010  Taiwan.   The U.S. government "deeply regrets" parliament's decision to reinstate the ban over widespread fears of mad cow disease, Washington's de facto embassy said in a statement, hinting at a chill in U.S. support for Taiwan's World Trade Organization role. Taiwan's handling of the issue has caused confusion for U.S. beef exporters in their sixth-largest market by value, worth $114 million as of the end of October compared to overall U.S. exports valued at $14.5 billion for the first 10 months of last year. The decision to re-impose the ban presents Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou with his biggest crisis since the widespread destruction caused by an August typhoon in which many thought authorities were slow to act. The United States recognizes China over self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own under its "one China" policy, but remains the island's closest informal ally and biggest arms supplier. On October 22, Taiwan said it would reopen its markets to U.S. bone-in beef such as T-bone steaks as well as ground beef and offal, which includes parts such as cow brain. Under the bill given final approval in parliament on Tuesday, imports of ground beef and cow offal will now not be allowed.

January 5, 2010  China and U.S.   China and the United States are No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in the number of trade sanctions imposed against them, a Globe Trade Alert study states. Part of the problem, certainly, is the growing number of disputes between the world's largest economy and the third largest, which did $409 billion in trade last year. Trading tensions between the two economic powers began in September, when the United States imposed a 35 percent tariff on Chinese tires. While accounting for less than 1 percent of the trade between the two, China saw it as a move to placate U.S. union workers imposed when Beijing had done nothing wrong. Tensions have escalated since.

January 4, 2010  Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan.  Paving the way for a single economic space Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan have introduced common customs tariffs starting January 1 in line with an agreement to form a common customs union. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed an agreement with his Belarus and Kazakh counterparts Alexander Lukashenko and Nursultan Nazarbayev respectively, in Minsk to create a custom union with common tariffs. The three former Soviet republics are planning to introduce a common customs space in July 2010 and form a single economic space in January 2012. This initiative will bring benefits Russia an additional 400 billion dollar in revenue and over 16 billion dollar to Kazakhstan and Belarus. The union could help the countries take key positions on the global energy and grain markets. In June 2009, the heads of governments of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) of their intention to join the world trade body as a customs union. In October 2009, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus announced they would resume talks on WTO accession separately, but on synchronized positions.

January 4, 2010  China and ASEAN.  A new free trade area comes into effect on Friday, incorporating China and the six founding members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). These countries include Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.  They plan to eliminate tariffs on 90% of imported goods. This will reduce the cost of trade and is likely to lead to an expansion of cross border commerce between the countries concerned. In terms of population it will be the largest trade area in the world, with nearly 1.9bn people and it includes some of the leading export driven economies. 

Friday, January 1, 2010  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

December 31, 2009 China.  An American trade panel gave final approval on Wednesday for duties of 10 to 16 percent on Chinese-made steel pipe in the biggest United States trade case to date against China. The panel, the International Trade Commission, voted 6-0 in favor of the duties set by the Commerce Department to offset Chinese government subsidies. The United States imported $2.74 billion of the “oil country tubular goods” from China in 2008, more than triple the previous year, as a surge in oil prices led to increased demand for the oil well pipe. The vote caps a year of United States-China trade friction. American companies and unions brought about a dozen trade cases against China in 2009, citing government subsidies and unfair pricing practices. President Obama also angered Beijing in September by imposing a 35 percent duty on imports of about $1.85 billion of Chinese-made tires in response to what the trade commission said was a market disrupting surge.

China, in response, has accused the United States of protectionism, filed a complaint against the tires decision at the World Trade Organization and began an inquiry into whether American-made autos were being “dumped” in China at unfairly low prices. The United Steelworkers union, which was the driving force behind the tires case, joined with the Maverick Tube Corporation, the United States Steel Corporation and other American manufacturers in asking for import duties on Chinese-made pipe. The vote Wednesday clears the way for the Commerce Department to impose final countervailing duties ranging from 10.36 percent to 15.78 percent on the pipe to offset Chinese government subsidies, as announced on Nov. 24. The Commerce Department has also announced preliminary antidumping duties ranging up to 99 percent on the pipe and is expected to announce its final decision on the size of those additional duties in early April. That would set the stage for a second trade commission vote, expected in May, on whether to allow those additional duties.

December 30, 2009  U.S. and China.  The United States announced yesterday preliminary penalties on imports of some Chinese steel grating, saying the products were sold at below-market value to gain an unfair trade advantage. The US this year has imposed duties on other China-made steel products because of alleged dumping or export subsidies, including steel pipes. The Commerce Department said it had preliminarily found that Chinese producers/exporters had sold steel grating in the United States at 14.36 to 145.18 percent less than normal value. "As a result of this preliminary determination, Commerce will instruct US Customs and Border Protection to collect a cash deposit or bond based on these preliminary rates," the department said in a statement. The steel grating is used for walkways, platforms and flooring. Imports of these products have increased six fold between 2006 and 2008, to an estimated value of 90.7 billion dollars, the department said. The Commerce Department is scheduled to make its final determination in April 2010.

December 30, 2009  Taiwan.  Taiwan’s parliament has voted to reinstitute bans on certain U.S. beef cuts and byproducts, according to a report from Reuters. The vote comes amid intense political pressure from Taiwan’s opposition party after the government agreed on October to conform to World Trade Organization guidelines by opening its borders to a wider range of U.S. beef products. According to a statement, “the public furor over fears of mad cow disease has handed President Ma Ying-jeou his biggest crisis since the government's perceived slow response to a deadly typhoon in August.”

December 29, 2009  China-EU.  The year 2009 has been bumpy for the China-EU relationship, but the two sides have managed to tide over difficulties and joined hands in face of the global financial crisis.  The European Union and China remained strong partners in various fields.  As the world becomes increasingly complex and diversified, the China-EU relationship is one of the most important partnerships in the world. China is the biggest developing country with a huge consumer market. The EU is China's second largest trading partner, while China is the EU's second most important export market just following the United States. In the past 35 years, China-EU trade has grown remarkably as the trade value topped 425.58 billion U.S. dollars last year, an increase of 19.5 percent over the year before.  Being two major actors on the international stage, the EU and China have always jointly called for efforts in different fields such as addressing the financial crisis, and maintaining the stability of the international financial markets. Finding a way to economic recovery is one of shared interests of China and the EU.

On Nov. 30 in Nanjing, China, the two sides held a summit at which climate change was a focal issue. The Chinese government pledged to cut the emissions per unit of gross domestic product by between 40 and 45 percent from the 2005 levels by 2020. This offer is "a major contribution to global efforts" to tackle climate change. The China-EU summit may be marked by some differences. But agreements have been reached. The two sides vowed to step up efforts to promote trade and investment and increase effective market access.  China welcomed the European Commission's pledge to provide up to 57 million Euros (82.1 million dollars) to a joint near-zero emissions coal project. China will continue to take active measures to increase imports from Europe to address the trade imbalance.

December 28, 2009  WTO.  The World Trade Organization (WTO) has announced establishment of a single panel to examine complaints by the U.S., EU and Mexico concerning China's export restrictions on raw materials. The Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) of the WTO in its last meeting of 2009 earlier this week, established a single panel at the 2nd-time requests of the US), the EU) and Mexico). The requests were considered for the 1st time at the DSB meeting on November 19 when they were blocked by China. The following countries noted their interest as 3rd-party rights: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, EU, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Chinese Taipei, Turkey and the United States.

December 28, 2009  China.  China’s trade surplus may slide 19 percent in 2010 as imports surge because of growing domestic demand, it has been predicted. The amount will narrow to $160 billion from an estimated $198 billion this year, Lu Ting, a Hong Kong-based economist stated. A smaller surplus may reduce friction between China, which is poised to become the world’s biggest exporter, and its major trading partners, the commerce ministry said Dec. 16. Disputes with the U.S. or Europe span shoes, tires, screws and the Obama administration’s complaint this week that Chinese plans to foster “indigenous innovation” are erecting a trade barrier.

December 25, 2009  Merry Christmas!

December 24, 2009  WTO.  The World Trade Organization issued an expected but nonetheless important ruling Monday that takes the U.S. a step closer to opening up China's potentially lucrative market for its movies, music and books. In the ruling, the WTO appellate body upheld an August panel decision that China broke international rules in restricting market access to foreign films, DVDs and other cultural products. That decision determined that the Chinese illegally had restricted foreigners from importing such goods, required media suppliers to go through the costly process of distributing goods through Chinese state-owned entities, and prohibited companies such as Apple Inc. from selling downloaded music.

With the appellate ruling, the U.S. and China are expected soon to begin negotiations on establishing a timetable for the Chinese to resolve the complaint. If a settlement can't be reached, the case would be arbitrated. If Beijing does not comply, the U.S. could impose trade sanctions against Chinese goods. Separately, the WTO said Monday that it would open an investigation on claims filed by the U.S., Mexico and the European Union that China illegally set export quotas and duties for raw materials such as coke, bauxite and magnesium. The U.S. and others contend that the quotas have made those materials cheaper for Chinese producers while inflating global prices by limiting their supplies, making it harder for foreign companies to compete.

December 23, 2009  EU.  The European Union has voted to extend tariffs on shoes from China and Vietnam in order to help European producers compete with cheaper imports. The tariffs, which were first introduced in 2006, will last for a further 15 months.  A number of countries in the EU were opposed to the extension. China is involved in a number of trade disputes, and on Monday lost an appeal to the World Trade Organization regarding US film and music imports. The organization ruled in August that China's policy of allowing the goods to be imported only by state-run firms broke global trade rules. The tariffs on Chinese shoes will remain at 16.5%, and those on Vietnamese shoes will remain at 10%.

December 22, 2009  Brazil.  Brazil told the World Trade Organization yesterday that it would set $829.3 million worth of annual sanctions on U.S. goods for the United States' failure to eliminate illegal subsidies to American cotton growers. The South American country didn't say when it would start punishing U.S. products in retaliation, but that an August ruling by the WTO means it can focus $268 million worth of penalties on American trademarks, patents and commercial services. The rest will be on American goods. The WTO in August authorized Brazil to punish the U.S. for continuing to hand out billions in illegal cotton subsidies, creating a formula that would let Latin America's largest nation to set sanctions according to how much the U.S. support programs are worth each year. The award was the second largest in the 14-year-old trade body's history, but it only let Brazil retaliate in the sensitive sector of intellectual property rights if U.S. payments exceeded a minimum threshold. Brazil says the U.S. has been able to retain its place as the world's second-largest cotton producer by paying out some $3 billion to American farmers each year. China is the largest exporter of cotton, while Brazil is fifth. The WTO's condemnation of the U.S. cotton programs has been seen as a victory for Brazil and for West African countries that claimed to have been harmed by the subsidies. Three decisions since have confirmed that U.S. payments unfairly help U.S. producers undersell foreign competitors and depress world market prices, dealing a double blow to cotton growers in Brazil and elsewhere.

December 21, 2009  Russia cuts 2010 import quotas.  The news comes as U.S. livestock farmers and meat exporters try to recover from the blow caused by high feed prices and weak global demand, and as Russia aims to become more self-sufficient in meat production. U.S. industry officials and analysts said they were disappointed in the quota cuts, but hoped Russia might raise the volumes during the year. Russia set its annual import quota for U.S. poultry at 600,000 tons, down from 750,000 tons in 2009. For pork, the quota was cut to 57,500 tons, down from 100,000 tons in 2009. "Fifty-seven percent of year-ago is not encouraging news" for pork, said Ron Plain, a livestock economist at the University of Missouri. "But they have been known to change their mind." U.S. exporters can ship pork to Russia outside the quota -- at higher tariff rates -- but that normally happens only when the economy is strong, said Joe Schuele, a spokesman for the U.S. Meat Export Federation. Russia could decide to expand its quota later in the year if an outbreak of a deadly pig disease called African swine fever cuts into domestic production.

December 21, 2009  China.  China has agreed to end dozens of export subsidies for Chinese branded goods - the subsidies covered a wide range of Chinese products sold around the world, including household electronic appliances, textiles and apparel, light manufacturing industries, agricultural and food products, metal and chemical products, and medicine.  

December 18, 2009  Doha.  Parties to one of the longest-running commercial disputes in the World Trade Organization (WTO) announced a resolution yesterday. The deal provides access to the E.U. market for banana exports from Latin America and represents one of the few successes in multilateral trade talks of late.  Notwithstanding yesterday's breakthrough, deadlock in the Doha Round continues. This was emphasized by the modest aims of a three-day meeting of WTO trade ministers in Geneva that ended on December 2. Although this was the WTO's first ministerial session for four years, the negotiations were not even on the formal agenda.

More significant was the approval by ministers from 22 developing countries of 'modalities' (detailed objectives and negotiating principles) for an ambitious tariff-cutting exercise in which they will offer each other preferential access to their markets for industrial and agricultural products. Success in these Global System of Trade Preferences (GSTP) negotiations is far from assured, but the fact they are going ahead at all underlines the disillusion of many developing countries with Doha's progress and direction.  The new 'Sao Paulo Round' of GSTP negotiations, launched in 2004 but only now gaining momentum, is ambitious. Participants represent barely half the GSTP signatories, but include many of the developing countries most active in the Doha negotiations: Brazil and its Mercosur partners; India and Pakistan; Chile and Mexico; Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand; and Egypt and Nigeria. Among the 22 are some surprises. South Korea is in despite its OECD membership, as are North Korea and Iran. China and South Africa are not participating; nor are the Andean group countries. Objectives and negotiating methods are well-defined. Participants are to offer cuts in import duties on 70% of all agricultural and industrial products that do not already enter their markets duty-free.

Proposed cuts must represent at least 20% of the applied duties (ie the duties actually charged).  Because the remaining 30% of dutiable imports can be excluded from offers, participants can continue to protect sensitive sectors. A final round of bargaining will deal with requests for additional cuts. The negotiations are to be completed by September 2010. In the broader context of world trade, the impact of a successful GSTP round will be relatively insignificant. Nevertheless, political benefits could include strengthened bonds among developing countries, and a demonstration to the developed world that participants are ready to take trade policy initiatives outside a drifting WTO.  The increase in trade should be largely painless, since non-GSTP suppliers will bear most of the burden of adjustment, and domestic producers of the 30% of goods excluded from cuts will be unaffected.

December 17, 2009  Armenia.  The head of an Armenian economy ministry department in charge of cooperation with EU and international economic cooperation, has stated that Armenia is likely to accede to the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Government Procurements in late 2010. The Agreement on Government Procurement of the World Trade Organization (WTO-AGP), commonly known as the GPA, establishes a framework of rights and obligations for government procurement among the WTO members that have signed it. The signatories have agreed that suppliers of goods and services in other signatory countries will be treated no less favorably than domestic suppliers in procurement covered by the Agreement, and that their laws, regulations and procedures relating to government procurement will be transparent and fair.

December 17, 2009  China.  The import tariff for fuel oil will be raised to 3 percent and bumped to 6 percent for jet fuel next year, an increase by the Chinese government of 1 percent for both products that could influence domestic oil prices. China will also cut a number of import tariffs to meet its World Trade Organization (WTO) commitment it made upon joining the organization in 2001 as it strives to restructure its economy. Moreover, export taxes on unwrought indium, indium scrap and indium powder will be reduced to 5 percent in 2010, from this year's 10-15 percent, according to a list of tax changes posted on the ministry's website. China announced on Tuesday that it will lower import duties on more than 600 products next year, including coal, naphtha and phosphate ore. As a result, China's overall import tariff level would be reduced to 9.8 percent next year, with that of agricultural products cut to 15.2 percent on average and industrial products to 8.9 percent.

December 16, 2009  Banana pact finally.   The European Union and United States initialed a deal with Latin American, African and Caribbean nations on Tuesday, ending a decades-old trade war over bananas. The pact also removes a potential obstacle to a new deal to open global commerce in the World Trade Organization’s eight-year-old Doha round. Final signature is expected to take place next year. Under the deal, the European Union — the world’s biggest importer of bananas — will cut the duty that it charges on imports of bananas from Latin American countries like Ecuador and Costa Rica. In return, it will provide aid of about 200 million euros, or $293 million, to banana growers in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries — mainly former European colonies whose exports to Europe enjoy preferential treatment but whose comparative advantage will now be reduced. The aid package is meant to help them to adjust. Bananas are a key export and economic cornerstone for many countries, including Cameroon and Dominica. Although the United States does not export bananas, it is a party to the deal as major distributors of the fruit — Chiquita, Del Monte and Dole — are American corporations. Fyffes of Ireland is also an important distributor. The deal will cut the tariff paid on bananas from Latin American countries to $114 a ton in 2017 from $176, with an initial cut to $148 on final signature of the deal that will be effective retroactively to Tuesday’s initialing. In return, Latin American banana producers will drop legal challenges to the European Union over its banana regime, which has been repeatedly condemned by W.T.O. panels for discriminating against the Latin American growers.

December 15, 2009  Banana deal signed today.  The European Union has moved to end the lengthy trade dispute with Latin American exporters and other nations over banana import tariffs by reaching an agreement with all parties today.  Sources close to the deal state that a final agreement could be signed today at the trade meeting, which is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland.   "Everybody is finally on board and an initialing of the deal is scheduled for Tuesday," one diplomat told the news agency. The long-running trade dispute, dubbed the 'banana wars', surrounds the supposed preferential treatment of African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) banana exporters, many of whom enjoy tariff-free entry to the EU as former colonies some European nations.

December 14, 2009  EU.  The European Union (EU) will pursue its case against the Philippines’ allegedly discriminatory taxation of imported liquor, it said in a statement. The EU has asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) to form a panel that will rule on the case. “Unfortunately, WTO consultations have not indicated any clear prospect of a possible remedy to this longstanding tax discrimination against imported spirits. Therefore, the EU has no other option [but to request] a WTO panel to rule on this issue," European Trade Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement. “We are convinced the EU will prevail in what is a clear case of tax discrimination but we still hope the Philippine government would remedy the situation without waiting for the completion of WTO dispute settlement procedures," she added. In a separate statement, the Philippines said it would oppose the Western bloc’s move. “The Philippines will assert all its legal rights and oppose the EU request for the establishment of a panel at the upcoming meeting," Manuel A. J. Teehankee, ambassador and permanent representative to the WTO, said. The EU decision came after the two economies failed to settle after formal talks in October. The EU earlier complained Republic Act 9334 unfairly increased excise tax rates by half for imported spirits, compared with only 30% for locally made liquor.

December 11, 2009  China.  China, the world’s largest steel consumer, will impose provisional duties on some U.S. and Russian imports following anti-dumping and subsidy investigations, escalating a trade spat started in September.  Flat-rolled electrical steel products from steelmakers including AK Steel Holding Corp., OAO Novolipetsk Steel and Allegheny Ludlum Corp., would attract duties of as much as 25 percent from tomorrow, China’s commerce ministry said in two statements on its Web site today. The steel is used to make power transformers.  China is striking back after the U.S., the European Union and other countries assessed tariffs and filed complaints about Chinese steel and commodity products to the World Trade Organization this year. U.S. and Russia last year exported a combined $602 million of the targeted steel products to China, according to Mysteel Research Institute. The tariffs come after U.S. President Barack Obama in a visit to Beijing last month pledged with China President Hu Jintao to work on easing trade frictions. Obama imposed tariffs on Chinese tires in September, and the U.S. later levied duties on some Chinese steel pipes. The two countries have $409 billion in annual two-way trade.

December 10, 2009  Canadian beef.  The last time Korean President Lee Myung-bak lifted a ban on beef it was American, and it triggered the biggest anti-government protests here in 20 years. Tens of thousands of Koreans streamed into the streets in May and June last year. Legions of riot police followed, water cannons exploded and rioters clashed with cops in a stunning display of national discontent. That discontent remains a powerful influence on Lee's thinking on whether to lift a ban on Canadian beef. Lee told Prime Minister Stephen Harper this week that the issue surrounding beef imports was "sensitive," an understatement if there ever was one.

For Canadian Prime Minister Harper, persuading the Koreans to lift the ban on Canadian beef that took effect in 2003 would be a clear coup – another takeaway to add to a basket of modest benefits brought back to Canada after his six-day Asian tour. Korea was once Canada's fourth biggest export market for beef. Canada was selling $50 million of beef to Korea annually by 2003 when Ottawa revealed a case of mad cow disease, also known as BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy).  Swiftly, the beef barrier came crashing down. Today, Koreans are still upset by Lee's May 2008 decision to lift the ban on U.S. beef. Lee had come to power only in February and his quick decision to lift the embargo enraged Koreans, who felt the new president was putting international relations ahead of public health. Analysts also say a healthy dose of anti-Americanism, associated with their military presence here, helped fuel discontent. To lift a ban on Canadian beef now, Lee would have to tread lightly – explaining why this would be different, but at the same time not alienating his American allies.

December 9, 2009  France and global trade.  France's overall trade through this year will decline more than 10 percent while "good signs" for the economy might emerge in 2010. Pascal Lamy, the chief of the World Trade Organization, has stated that global trade would fall more than 10 percent this year with both supply and demand hit hard by the economic crisis. Given the international trade environment, French trade in 2009 would see the same shrinking degree, attributing the contraction to "the drop of demand in global market" and "rarefying of credit" since the begin of this year. However, considering the global average and previous performance of French trade, France showed little worry about the decline, noting "good signs" for 2010.  According to customs data, France's trade deficit narrowed to 4.646 billion euros in 3rd quarter, marking a quarterly record low since 2004, thanks to increases in manufacturing exports on the back of stronger car and aircraft sales.

December 8, 2009  WTO.  Last week's Seventh Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, attended by some 3,000 delegates from 153 members, didn't disappoint in living up to its modest expectations. The group didn't even bother to issue a final declaration, since following the two-and-a-half day meeting it had nothing substantial to declare despite its general theme of `The WTO, the Multilateral Trading System and the Current Global Economic Environment.` Even the street protests by people opposed to the WTO`s role in globalization failed to match the violent `Battle in Seattle` from its meeting in Washington state 10 years ago. The WTO`s Ministerial Conference, its highest level decision-making body, is supposed to convene at least once every two years. But last week's conference came long after the December 2005 Hong Kong meeting. These are serious indications of the WTO`s shaky presence and diminished authority in coping with the complex problems in global trade and myriad trade-related issues as world trade has suffered its most drastic decline in 80 years. The WTO`s problems are bound to get even more complex if and when the global climate change controversy, which will be the subject of this week's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, leads to disputes over trade restrictions on the exports of countries that either fail to join or inadequately enforce a global climate agreement.

Lamy, as well as most trade ministers, called for the speedy conclusion of the Doha Round, many setting 2010 as yet another deadline, with the WTO Website bragging that the ministers had shown `political energy` regarding this. But the reality was different, with almost everyone agreeing that the domestic political obstacles in WTO member countries, especially in the US, to concluding the Doha Round successfully during the still-fragile recovery from the global economic crisis look insurmountable. This reality check prompted the proposal to chop up the Doha Round's 20-topic agenda into politically acceptable bites and negotiate several more manageable mini-deals, especially outside of the most intractable agricultural issues. But Lamy said at the end of the conference that unless all members agree to split the Doha Round into several mini-deals, it would remain a "single undertaking", an all-or-nothing deal. He stressed the advantages of such a deal, which enables the most comprehensive multilateral exchange of concessions among the maximum number of member countries. There were also attempts to strike pluri-lateral deals among groups of members, such as an industrial tariff reduction agreement among 22 emerging market economies – not, however, including China. We can view these attempts from the perspective of the recent proliferation of bilateral and regional trade agreements, which although compatible with the WTO rules under certain conditions, work against both the spirit and objectives of global trade negotiations such as the Doha Round.

December 8, 2009  WTO chief.  The director general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy of France, has been named to a panel responsible for monitoring the principles governing the operation of the news and financial services agency Thomson Reuters. Lamy was appointed to the board of directors of the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company. Directors act as trustees of the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles, which "govern the way Thomson Reuters carries out business throughout the world", the agency said. Thomson Reuters was formed in April 2008 through the acquisition of Reuters by Thomson Corp of Canada.

December 7, 2009  South Korea.  South Korea submitted a list of "sensitive" agricultural products to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in a move that could shield local farmers by slowing down the speed of market liberalization. The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said the list forwarded late last week includes 63 products such as beef, onion, barley and chilli peppers. This is equal to 425 separate goods according to the so-called 10-digit product code (HS10) designation that is a nomenclature for classifying items traded around the world. "The number of products submitted accounts for 27.8 percent of all HS10 codes in use," a official said, although not all products will be allowed to get protection.  Under agreed rules, developing nations can lower tariffs rates more gradually for up to 5.3 percent of all products on the HS10 list to help protect local growers from influx of cheap imports from abroad. Countries, however, should first inform the WTO of what products they are considering for slower tariff reduction rates, and take steps to offset this move by give minimum market access to exporters through a tariff rate quota (TRQ) system. The TRQ system, which is synonymous with minimum market access, is the quantity of products that the government must pledge to import on a regular basis to retain and country's tariff waiver that can block imports.  

December 4, 2009  Russia and WTO. Vladimir Putin said the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik Amendment that restricts U.S. trade with Russia was an "anachronism" hindering Russia's World Trade Organization accession bid. Speaking during an annual question-and-answer session with Russians on Thursday, Prime Minister Putin said the country continues to seek accession to the WTO, but "we have an impression that for some reason some countries, including the United States, are hindering our entry to the WTO." Russia, the only major economy outside the WTO, has been seeking membership for 16 years. Putin said the 1974 amendment that tied trade relations to emigration rights in the Soviet Union has been used by lobby groups in the U.S. Congress pursuing their own tapered interests. "We have to live with that," he added. Putin reiterated that Russia could seek membership in the WTO together with Belarus and Kazakhstan, with which it has agreed to create a customs union with common tariffs, paving the way for a single economic space, or separately, but taking into account the ex-Soviet states' common interests. "The chief priority to us is post-Soviet integration, and we welcome the process taking place in the Customs Union," he said.

December 3, 2009  UN trade deal.  Almost two dozen emerging countries agreed Wednesday to cut tariffs on some goods by 20 percent as part of a deal that aims to stimulate trade in the developing world. Ministers representing Brazil, India and 20 other countries pledged to wrap up the accord next year. China is not included. The talks are overseen by the United Nations and are separate to the World Trade Organization's long-running Doha trade liberalization round. The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said the deal will help "stimulate trade between developing countries" by allowing them to lower tariffs on each other's goods, while maintaining higher charges on imports from nonparticipating nations. The deal allows each country to exempt 30 percent of tariff lines from cuts, meaning nearly a third of domestic goods would face no new foreign competition after the accord comes into force. There is no deadline yet for when countries would have to implement the tariff cuts.

December 2, 2009  EC becomes EU.  The World Trade Organization (WTO) yesterday formally started to use the name "European Union (EU)" as the Lisbon Treaty came into force. Previously, for legal reasons the EU was known officially in the WTO as the European Communities (EC). 
"For the first time in the WTO, the name 'European Union' was used" at an ongoing WTO ministerial conference, the Geneva-based body said in a statement. But the name EC will continue to be found in older documents, it said.  The Lisbon Treaty came into force on Tuesday across the 27-nation European Union. It will allow the bloc to be able to speak with one stronger voice on the international stage.  The EU (until Nov. 30 known officially in the WTO as the EC), as a single customs union with a single trade policy and staff, has been a WTO member since Jan. 1, 1995.  Its 27 member states are also WTO members in their own right.

December 2, 2009  Bananas settlement - finally.  The European Union and two blocs of developing countries have reached a deal on bananas, ending the world's oldest trade dispute and removing a barrier to a new agreement to open up global commerce, diplomats said on Tuesday. But some minor details still remain to be ironed out, and the deal will not be ready for signing until later this week or next week, they said. "Fine tuning," said one European diplomat, expressing confidence the deal could be completed in the next day or so, during or after the current World Trade Organization conference. "Very close," said a Latin American diplomat, also forecasting a deal this week.

The deal will end the decades-old dispute by gradually cutting the tariff paid in the lucrative European market on bananas from Latin America. Latin American producers such as Ecuador, Colombia and Costa Rica argue that the EU's current regime discriminates against them -- in breach of WTO rules -- by charging lower tariffs on fruit from less efficient ACP countries as part of the EU's preferential treatment of imports from certain poor countries. WTO courts have ruled against the current EU regime, and Brussels must change it. Under the deal, ACP countries such as Trinidad and Cameroon will be compensated with a development package from the EU. The bananas deal is also linked to a broader agreement under the WTO's eight-year-old Doha round regulating trade in tropical products such as sugar, rum, tobacco and other fruit, and the ACP countries have secured concessions there, diplomats said.

December 1, 2009  WTO meets.  The World Trade Organization (WTO) opened its first ministerial conference in four years on Monday, where trade chiefs of its 153 members were due to review the activities of the multilateral trade body and gather momentum for the Doha Round negotiations. It would be "a platform for ministers to review the functioning of this house" and an occasion "to send a number of strong signals to the world with respect to the entire WTO waterfront of issues, from monitoring and surveillance to disputes, accessions, aid for trade, technical assistance and international governance," WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said.

For the three-day conference, the first one after trade chiefs last met in 2005 in Hong Kong, more than 2,700 delegates, along with 400 journalists and nearly 500 members of civil society, would have discussions under the main theme "WTO, Multilateral Trading System and Current Global Economic Environment." The conference is taking place as world trade is emerging from its worst contraction since the Great Depression in 1930s due to the impact of the financial and economic crisis. World trade will shrink by more than 10 percent in volume terms this year, according to the WTO. Addressing the opening ceremony, Lamy said the WTO needs to be adjusted to changing risks, calling for advancement of the Doha Round of global trade talks.

November 30, 2009  Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan.   The presidents of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus reached an agreement on Friday to create a new customs union from July 1, 2010, creating common external tariffs and a single market for 165 million people. Russia has said it wants to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) quickly but that it will coordinate its trade talks with both Belarus and Kazakhstan. Russia remains the largest economy outside the 153-member organization. Moscow's own WTO talks have often stalled on various disputes. Before joining the WTO -- through the customs union or on its own -- Russia must resolve several trade and tariff issues. Leaders of WTO countries say accession would allow Russia to trim import tariffs while remaining competitive, and have urged it to increase its efforts to join.  But Russia has stiffened restrictions on a series of imports, including a 30-percent duty on new foreign cars, to protect domestic industries during a recession that wiped out a tenth of the country's economy in the first half of the year.

November 30, 2009  WTO protest.  Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets Saturday to separate violent demonstrators from a protest of a meeting of top world trade officials, but the hooded "black bloc" activists were able to cause damage before 14 were arrested, spokesmen said. The protesters set fire to at least four cars, broke shop windows and committed other acts of violence Saturday. The clashes occurred during a march by demonstrators protesting a meeting of the World Trade Organization scheduled to start Monday, in which the United States, China and other commercial powers will spearhead a new attempt to find ways to revive world trade and drag the global economy out of recession. Much more serious clashes have occurred at previous meetings of trade chiefs, but the coming session lacks the specific goals of previous meetings, when the World Trade Organization tried to conclude a new trade deal. The last so-called ministerial was held in Hong Kong four years ago. Others were in Cancun, Mexico, and Seattle. WTO opponents claim the agreements produced by the body foster the growth of wealth among corporations at the expense of farmers, workers and others at the low end of the economy.

November 27, 2009  WTO meets.  Thousands are expected to protest a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Saturday in Geneva. Organizers expect between 5,000 to 6,000 protestors to show their opposition the seventh WTO Ministerial Conference.  The protestors, who will represent small-scale farmers and NGOs, have been authorized by Geneva's police to march from Place Neuve to the Parc des Cropettes, with the WTO headquarters as their final destination. It will mark a ten-year anniversary, almost to the day, of the protests against a similar WTO conference in Seattle, when 40,000 people took to the streets and 600 arrests were made. Geneva police have fenced off portions of the Rue de Vermont, where the majority of WTO meetings will take place. Police from neighboring cantons have agreed to act as reinforcements.  The seventh WTO Ministerial Conference will convene from November 30 to December 2 to discuss international trading and the current global economic situation. The Geneva-based WTO was established in 1995 and has 153 members.     

November 26, 2009  U.S. celebrates Thanksgiving.

November 25, 2009  WTO.  Officials a the World Trade Organization report that they will create a dispute settlement panel to review challenges presented by Canada and Mexico in regard the United States' country-of-origin labeling law on meat and other food products. The panel will serve as a legal review body for international trade. Sectors in both Canada and Mexico have charged that the U.S. COOL requirements are stifling their livestock industries and limiting marketing options. Among the complaints is that U.S. meatpackers are choosing to refrain from buying animals originating from Canada or Mexico rather than go through the trouble of sorting them and labeling product to comply with COOL's rules. For both Canadian and U.S. pork producers, this has presented several challenges as producers from the two countries have established a variety production business arrangements. Among those, some Canadian producers farrow sows and send the weaned pigs to U.S. producers who finish out and market those pigs. The WTO panel will determine whether COOL rules comply with U.S. WTO trade obligations. The panel is expected to issue its report next summer or early fall, according to Canadian officials. Media reports indicate the panel will issue a joint decision on the complaints of Canada and Mexico.

November 24, 2009  WTO.  India and China have been cooperating and supporting each other at the World Trade Organization to raise the profile and strength of emerging economies. China has submitted a proposal supported by India and other countries, including South Africa that the Budget Finance and Administration Committee of the staff composition of the WTO be more representative of the organization as a whole. India and China are working towards other reform goals as well as more representation for developing countries in multilateral organizations like the International Monetary Fund and and the World Bank. According to the WTO website, only 327 out of the 629 permanent staff in the secretariat are from France, Switzerland , United Kingdom and the United States.

November 23, 2009  Canada and Jordan.  On November 17, 2009, the Canadian Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, tabled legislation to implement the Canada-Jordan free trade agreement (FTA) and related agreements on labor cooperation and the environment . It is anticipated that the FTA and related Agreements on the Environment and Labour Cooperation could be brought into force in early 2010. Once implemented, the FTA will expand Canada-Jordan trade and help further strengthen our bilateral relationship. An FTA with Jordan also demonstrates the importance that Canada places on further developing relations with Jordan, especially given its role as a moderate Arab state that promotes peace and security in the Middle East.

November 23, 2009  Iraq.  Iraq could get membership in the World Trade Organization by end-2011 if it actively pursues accession, which could help the country's rebuilding efforts by boosting trade and investment, a U.S. official said. Iraq began the accession process in 2004 but has taken only the initial steps needed for membership. Iraq's benefits might also be limited since Iran, one of its main trading partners, is not a member. Some Iraqi ministries, like the finance ministry, are especially keen on accession because it would boost trade, and revenues from tariffs. WTO accession stands to increase Iraq's access to imported goods, introduce standardization and quality control of goods and pave the way for less chaotic and bureaucratic customs practices.

November 20, 2009  Brazil.  Brazil won the World Trade Organization’s approval to start retaliating against the U.S. because of subsidies paid to American cotton farmers.  The WTO gave Brazil permission in August to impose $294.7 million in sanctions against U.S. goods -- the second-highest amount ever permitted by the Geneva-based trade arbiter -- and Brazil’s government earlier this month released a list of 222 products that may be subject to increased duties. The list includes cotton and other agricultural and textile products as well as U.S. exports such as electronics, cosmetics, ketchup, cars, chewing gum, medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.  WTO judges found in September 2004 that as much as $4 billion in annual U.S. payments to cotton farmers violated global trade rules by encouraging excess production and driving down world prices. In June 2008, they upheld a finding that the U.S., the world’s largest exporter of the fiber, hadn’t done enough to scrap aid to its cotton producers.  The U.S. told the WTO today that it “intends to comply with the recommendations and rulings in this dispute. We do not believe it will be necessary for Brazil to exercise” the sanctions.

November 20, 2009  EU and U.S.   The World Trade Organization opened investigations yesterday into a European Union ban on American poultry, and U.S. labeling rules for cattle and hog imports from Canada and Mexico. In a dispute meeting dominated by agriculture, the WTO set up panels to review the poultry and country-of-origin labeling complaints and deliver rulings within nine months. The global trade arbiter also authorized Brazil to raise tariffs on U.S. goods to punish the U.S. for providing American cotton growers with billions of dollars in illegal subsidies. In the poultry case, Washington and Brussels have argued for more than a decade over EU restrictions on imports of poultry treated with four anti-bacterial chemicals: chlorine dioxide, acidified sodium chloride, trisodium phosphate and peroxyacids. Each has been approved for poultry processing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Agriculture Department, but the 27-nation bloc has banned poultry carcasses processed with such treatments since 1997. The U.S. took the dispute to the WTO in the final days of ex-President George W. Bush's tenure, when it was seen largely as a farewell gift from the Bush administration to the American farm lobby and a final insult to the EU after years of sometimes bitter trade and political disputes. It was inherited by the Obama administration, which has gone ahead with the case. Canada and Mexico, meanwhile, are hoping the WTO will rule against a U.S. decision last year to no longer allow Mexican and Canadian calves that are raised and slaughtered in the United States to qualify as being cattle of U.S. origin. They say the law poses an unfair impediment to fair competition, but Washington defends it as a legitimate way to provide greater customer information.

November 19, 2009  Russia.  Russia confirmed on Wednesday it wants to join the World Trade Organization and said members of its customs union with Kazakhstan and Belarus would seek to join as separate entities. But a Russian official said after trade talks with the European Union in Stockholm that Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan would join in a coordinated way and with a common position.

November 19, 2009  EU and Russia.  In Stockholm, Russia has set a new target for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions at a summit with the European Union  but failed to clear up confusion over its plans to join the World Trade Organization. The EU said the promise to make further reductions to those planned was a boost for climate talks in Copenhagen next month, and the good atmosphere at the meeting was a sharp contrast to previous EU-Russia summits that have been marred by disputes. One sour note at the talks in Stockholm was a disagreement over human rights, with the EU expressing concern over the situation in Russia. But the sides said they hoped soon to agree a new framework agreement for economic and political ties and avoided any conflict over Russian energy supplies to Europe.

November 18, 2009  2010 Doha.  World Trade Organization members still have much work to do if they want to achieve their goal of reaching a new deal on opening up global commerce in 2010, WTO Director General Pascal Lamy said on Tuesday. Political leaders have set next year as the deadline for completing the Doha round of negotiations, which began in 2001 aiming to boost prosperity by cutting industrial and agricultural tariffs and farm subsidies, and to help developing countries to trade more. But the longest-running trade round remains beset by differences between exporters and importers and rich and poor countries after 8 years of on-again off-again negotiations and missed deadlines. The World Bank has estimated that cutting costs by 50 percent to increase efficiency at ports and airports could increase global trade in manufacturing by up to $377 billion a year and triple any benefits for consumers from cutting duties.

November 17, 2009  Bluefin Tuna.  The EU Commission says over 45 countries who catch tuna have agreed to cut catches of the threatened Atlantic bluefin tuna next year. The EU executive says the decision by countries including the EU, U.S. and Japan to limit 2010 catch quotas to 13,500 tons aims to prevent overfishing of the much sought-after tuna. The Commission announced the decision Monday following weekend talks in Brazil by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. The body sets annual fishing limits in an effort to save the fish stock from extinction. Catches were lowered from 28,500 tons to 22,000 this year. Scientists say that is 7,000 tons over what they would advise

November 16, 2009  APEC.  Washington signaled it will resist protectionism as it copes with the economic downturn, announcing Saturday that the U.S. will join a free-trade area with other Pacific Rim nations. Leaders attending the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore had expressed concerns that the U.S., the world's biggest economy, might turn inward as it grapples with high unemployment and other urgent domestic priorities. President Barack Obama, speaking in Tokyo before departing for the meetings in Singapore, announced that the U.S. would participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, joining Chile, New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei. The news drew loud applause at the APEC forum, and gave a boost to proposals to create a broad free-trade area spanning the 21-member forum. APEC, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, was created to promote greater trade and integration among Pacific Rim nations. Its scope since has expanded to encompass a wide range of issues, including climate change, energy and food security, and politics.

November 13, 2009  APEC.  Asia-Pacific trade and foreign ministers, wrapping up their meetings in Singapore on Thursday, decided to extend their anti-protectionism measures agreed in July to 2010. The 21 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies pledged to refrain from raising new barriers to trade and investment, said a final statement from the joint APEC ministerial meeting. A review of trade, fiscal and monetary measures among member economies that began in July to insure they were not protectionist would continue to 2010, the statement said. APEC ministers said they were concerned at the lack of substantive progress on concluding the round of world trade talks launched in Doha in 2001 and called for a deal next year. The Doha round of world trade talks was launched eight years ago to help poor countries prosper through trade. World leaders recently set a goal of concluding a deal in the long-running talks by next year, but negotiations in Geneva have stalled. The ministers said they "will accelerate efforts to advance into endgame negotiations" in agriculture and other areas at issue in the negotiations. 

November 12, 2009  APEC.  The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is widely known for that perfect Kodak moment when leaders of some of the world's most powerful economies unanimously donned on a traditional attire and posed for the camera.  But academics said the club, which groups 21 Pacific rim economies including China, the United States, Japan and Russia, has played an instrumental role in bringing the region together in the past 20 years, even though it was, in some sense, an occasion for leaders to just meet and talk at ease. At its inception, the APEC was just a loose consultative forum when ministers from 12 member economies met for the first time in Australia in the winter of 1989, according to a book launched Tuesday to mark the group's 20th anniversary. It gained remarkable significance in 1993 when then U.S. President Bill Clinton invited the region's leaders to the Blake Island, Seattle for the group's first ever leaders' summit. In 1994, APEC economic leaders endorsed an ambitious vision to achieve free and open trade in the region -- industrialized members by 2010 and developing members by 2020. Since then, annual intra-APEC merchandise trade grew almost five times to 8.44 trillion U.S. dollars in 2007 -- with an average increase of 8.5 percent per year, compared to the world's average of 7.6 percent. At this year's APEC summit, to be held over the weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama, China's Hu Jintao, Japan's Yukio Hatoyama and other regional leaders are expected to declare support for a global trade deal in 2010 and to vow for concerted efforts to fight global warming.

November 11, 2009  Canada honours Remembrance Day while the U.S. commemorates Veteran's Day.

November 10, 2009  China.  US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefky is flying to China for last minute talks designed to secure China's membership of the World Trade Organization before a new round of trade talks begins on 30 November.  Ms Barshefsky, who is being accompanied by senior White House economic aide Gene Sperling, will have two days of talks with Chinese negotiators in Beijing.  It will be the first serious negotiations between the two sides since September 27, when Foreign Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng had a one-day meeting with Ms Barshefsky that was " beneficial" and "constructive". Mr Shi said on Tuesday that the " negotiations on China's entry into the WTO have entered a critical stage."  China has been trying to join the WTO for 13 years, but talks have been stalled on demands from the United States and the European Union for further measures to open China's markets to Western investment and trade.

November 9, 2009  Brazil.  Brazil will publish today a preliminary list of U.S. goods it intends to hit with trade sanctions in retaliation for Washington's cotton subsidies. The move is the strongest indication yet that Brazil intends to levy trade sanctions on Washington in the long-standing cotton dispute, which diplomats say could sour bilateral relations. In August the World Trade Organization set out terms for Brazil to retaliate against U.S. cotton subsidies, including marketing loans and counter-cyclical payments. Brazil says it is entitled to some $800 million in sanctions this year, including $340 million in cross-retaliation. The United States has estimated sanctions at about $300 million with no cross-retaliation. The list could include 120 items worth between $1.5 billion and $2 billion annually - following consultations and public hearings, the list could be cut back to represent a value of around $800 million. By year-end the list may also include sanctions on patents and other intellectual property rights.

November 9, 2009  WTO stats.  The World Trade Organization stated Friday that 400 trade dispute cases had been filed since the agency was formed in 1995, with the United States and the European Union lodging the most complaints. "On the eve of its 15th 'birthday', the World Trade Organization (WTO) earlier this month reached the milestone of having the 400th trade dispute brought to the body's dispute settlement mechanism," said the trade body.  The 400th dispute was brought by Canada on Monday against the European Union, challenging a ban imposed by Brussels on imported seal products. The EU is the second most frequently targeted members of the WTO, with 66 cases brought against it. In turn, it launched 81 cases. Meanwhile, the United States is both the biggest plaintiff and defendant in WTO disputes, bringing 93 of the complaints and being targeted in 107 cases. Since joining the trade body in 2001, China has launched six cases and was the target of 17 cases. Of the 400 cases filed by the trade body's 153 members, about half have been settled by the parties without going to litigation.

November 6, 2009  EU and India.  European Union (EU) customs officials will meet in the “next couple of weeks” to resolve the issue of Indian generic drugs consignments in transit being seized at the continent’s ports, EU trade commissioner Catherine Ashton stated after a meeting with commerce minister Anand Sharma. There have been several recent seizures of Indian-made drugs at European ports on grounds of alleged patent infringement. The consignments were meant for destinations elsewhere.  While the EU cites domestic laws of individual countries against patent infringements, India maintains that European countries are creating trade barriers against Indian drug companies to protect the interests of their firms. In 2008, there were 17 cases of medicine seizures in the Netherlands alone, according to a response from the Dutch authorities to Health Action International, a non-profit organization, under a freedom of information request. Of these, 16 were shipped from India and one from China.

November 6, 2009  Airbus.  Airbus Americas Inc. spent $190,000 in the third quarter lobbying over its competition for a $35 billion Air Force contract for aerial refueling tankers and other issues, according to a recent disclosure form. In September, the World Trade Organization made an interim ruling deeming European loans for Airbus as illegal subsidies. A separate ruling on a European Union counter-complaint against the U.S. is expected around March. European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co.'s Airbus and its partner Northrop Grumman Corp. are competing with Boeing Co. over the contract to build 179 tankers. The contract was awarded to the Northrop-EADS team last year, but the Pentagon revisited it after Boeing protested and its claims were deemed valid.

November 5, 2009  U.S., EU and China.  The U.S. and the European Union asked the World Trade Organization to probe Chinese taxes on exports of raw materials used by the steel, aluminum and chemical industries.  The measures keep coke, bauxite, manganese and other substances cheaper and available for domestic manufacturers, according to the complaint filed in Geneva yesterday. Trade tensions between China and the U.S. and the EU have grown after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression slashed exports. Pascal Lamy, the WTO’s director general, stated yesterday that the threat of protectionism may linger for another two years as countries attempt to protect jobs.  “This is another sign of trade tensions around the world,” said David Cohen, an economist at Action Economics in Singapore. “There’s tension but it’s yet to get out of hand; it’s far cry from the 1930s when protectionism clearly aggravated the collapse in trade.”

 November 5, 2009  Canada.  Canada has elevated its dispute with the European Union over the regional bloc's ban on trade in seal products by asking for a World Trade Organization consultation on the matter. The WTO consultations are the first step to settle international disputes. Ottawa decided to bring the matter to the WTO's hands after the ban was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The publication is the last step in EU's lawmaking process, after which the ban will take effect August 2010. Canadian Minister of International Trade Stockwell Day said in a statement, "Canada is standing up for its sealers. The EU has adopted a regulation that bans the sale of Canadian seal products. We believe that this is a violation of the EU's trade obligations. The Canadian seal hunt is a legitimate economic pursuit, and the EU's decision to ban the importation of seal products is based neither on science nor on facts."

November 4, 2009  Iran.  At the next general assembly meeting of the World Trade Organization on December 17, Iran's workgroup will officially be admitted in the organization and the process for accession to WTO will formally start. It is predicted that the major negotiations for the accession of Iran to the WTO will start in 2010 adding that the process may take 10 years. The World Trade Organization is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified by their parliaments.

November 3, 2009 APEC.  Leaders of the 21 APEC economies are concerned that high level political commitment to conclude the Doha Round of world trade talks has yet to translate into substantive progress and called for a deal next year, a draft statement from the group declared. The draft statement, expected to be delivered at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Singapore later this month, said the grouping was "ready to exercise all possible flexibility in order to accelerate the pace in negotiations." WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said last month the goal of signing a new global commerce deal in 2010 was out of reach unless countries accelerated their negotiations. APEC has 21 member economies: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United States and Vietnam.

November 2, 2009 Antidumping measures.  Anti-dumping measures against unfairly priced imports jumped by more than one third in the year to June, the World Trade Organization stated Friday. The figures suggested that governments had become more aggressive during the financial crisis in countering imports that they believed were unfairly competing with home products. Anti-dumping measures are often a source of trade disputes, but in principle WTO members are allowed to impose duties on goods that are dumped -- sold for less than cost -- if an investigation shows they are being sold cheaply and are hurting domestic producers. The fact that the WTO's 153 members are using anti-dumping measures rather than other more overtly protectionist tools, and are notifying them to the WTO also suggests the global trading system is holding up under pressure from the crisis. The 2009 report from the WTO's Committee on Anti-Dumping Practices said members had notified a total of 281 provisional and final anti-dumping measures that they had launched between July 2008 and June 2009. In the same 2007/08 period the total was 201.

Out of the notified measures, India was the most active user, with 68 provisional and final measures launched in 2008/09, up from 45 the previous year.  The United States, which under President Barack Obama has promised to enforce trade rules more vigorously, notified 47 measures, up from 30. Brazil's notifications rose to 28 from 17, and Argentina's rose to 23 from 10. China, now the world's biggest exporter, was again by far the biggest target of anti-dumping, which accounting for 120 in 2008/09, up from 75 in the previous year. But China, which is often accused by its partners of being protectionist, cut the number of its notified measures to 14 from 18. Anti-dumping measures notified by the European Union fell to 20 from 26.

November 2, 2009  Mexico and U.S.  Mexico has requested that the World Trade Organization settle a dispute over U.S. country-of-origin labeling rules that Mexico says unfairly hurt its cattle industry. Mexico joins Canada, which already requested a dispute settlement panel on the issue. In a Oct. 9 statement, Mexico's Agriculture Department says previous rules allowed meat from Mexican-born cattle raised and slaughtered in the United States to qualify as being of U.S. origin. New rules approved in 2008 no longer allow that, however, and Mexico says the change violated WTO rules and "significantly affected'' Mexican exporters. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the labeling provides "information to consumers in a manner consistent'' with WTO rules.

October 30, 2009  The biggest trade deal ever!   This past spring, prime ministers of Canada and  the Czech Republic met with European Union mandarins from Brussels - where they hatched a plan for the biggest free-trade deal of the 21st century. The short answer is that after decades of spinning their wheels, Canada and the EU finally agreed to begin negotiating a free-trade agreement (FTA). Last week in Ottawa, Canada, where the first round of Canada-EU negotiations reached a successful conclusion, with both sides optimistic that a deal can be signed as early as the summer of 2010. When that happens, a push will begin for the ultimate goal behind the Prague agreement: a NAFTA-EU trade zone to counterbalance the growing economic power of Fortress Asia, and the ascendancy of the so-call BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) group of countries.

Annual two-way trade between Canada and EU is about $100 billion, less than 20% of the total between Canada and the U.S. under NAFTA. But a trans-Atlantic NAFTA-EU trade zone would encompass nearly 1 billion people and account for $35.2 trillion in annual GDP, more than half the world's total. By comparison the combined GDP of the 10-member ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), China and India was $7 trillion in 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund. That does not seem like an imminent threat to the economic supremacy of the West, but Asia is not standing still. Some 140 bi-lateral FTAs have been signed in the region over the past decade. Most significantly ASEAN and China are moving towards significant tariff reductions by 2010. Also, India is set to join this burgeoning trade bloc after signing an FTA with ASEAN earlier this year, which would create a trade zone of nearly 3 billion people over the next decade. Goldman Sachs estimates that by 2050 the world's three biggest economies will be China, the U.S. and India in that order, compared to the U.S., Japan and Germany today. That represents a clear shift away from the G7. The World Trade Organization's efforts to lower trade barriers under the Doha round of talks has hit a wall. The main reason is that developed countries led by the EU, U.S. and Japan cannot come to an agreement on new rules governing agriculture and industrial tariffs with major developing countries such as India, Brazil and China.

October 29, 2009  U.S. and EU.  The United States and European Union have pledged to work to reduce regulatory barriers that impede trade across the Atlantic, but said a free-trade pact was not in the cards right now. "The goal ... is to build on the already very deep and broad relationship we have between the U.S. and the European Union to find further ways to integrate our economies," said Michael Froman, White House deputy national security adviser. He spoke after a meeting of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), a U.S.-EU forum created in 2007 with the goal of creating a "barrier-free" transatlantic marketplace. The two sides agreed by their next meeting in 2010 to identify key sectors including labeling, energy efficiency and nanotechnology for increased cooperation on regulation. They also announced plans for a new U.S.-EU Energy Council and to establish an "innovation dialogue" aimed at creating jobs in fields such as information and communication technologies, health information and clean energy. Together, the United States and the European Union account for more than half the world's economic output and each is the other's most important trade and investment partner.

October 28, 2009  Canada.  The Canadian International Council named Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization, as globalist of the year on Monday. Lamy was first elected to his post at the WTO in 2005 and re-elected this year for a second four-year term. He began his career in the French civil service before serving as chief of staff for the president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors. In November 1994, he was part of the team in charge of rescuing Credit Lyonnais and later became chief executive of the bank until its privatization in 1999. Lamy was commissioner for trade at the European Commission between 1999 and 2004.

October 27, 2009  Canada and Mexico.  The United States has delayed the establishment of a panel to look into a complaint by Canada and Mexico about country-of-origin requirements for cattle and hog imports. It was one of the issues raised at a World Trade Organization dispute meeting Friday in Geneva, along with a U.S. complaint about European barriers to American poultry. The WTO also opened an investigation Friday into whether European Union charges on imports of Chinese steel fasteners comply with international commerce rules. The dispute between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico concerns U.S. rules approved in 2008 that no longer allow meat from Mexican and Canadian cattle that are raised and slaughtered in the United States to qualify as being of U.S. origin. Canada and Mexico say the provisions pose an unfair impediment to fair competition. They requested the WTO examine the rules. Washington defends the labeling as a legitimate way to provide greater customer information.

October 27, 2009  EU and China. The World Trade Organization has agreed to investigate whether European Union duties on Chinese screws and bolts are discriminatory. China initiated the WTO case on July 31st 2009, 6 months after the EU announced plans to impose the 5 year duties on imports of Chinese iron or steel fasteners valued at about EUR 575 million in 2007. EU said at the time that the tariffs would prevent further distortions and restore fair competition. The EU applied the levies after concluding that Chinese companies had sold the carbon steel fasteners in Europe at artificially low prices, a practice known as dumping. China says the duties unfairly penalize the commercial interests of more than 1,700 of the country’s fastener producers. China accounts for 60% of EU imports of the fasteners, which are used for everything from car parts to furniture and also come from Taiwan, the US and Japan. Manufacturers from in eastern China, representing a quarter of Chinese fastener exports, say they’re being unfairly targeted because they charge the same as Taiwanese producers and more than rivals in Malaysia, Vietnam and India. The EU didn’t try to block the establishment of the panel of judges, agreeing to China’s first request to have WTO arbitration. Under the WTO’s dispute rules, the EU could have delayed the first request, putting off creation of the panel for a month.

October 26, 2009  WTO.  Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus intend to join World Trade Organization (WTO) under equal conditions. Vice Minister of Industry and Commerce of Kazakhstan, Zhanar Aytzhanova, has stated. "During all these years, we have been carrying out negotiations to join WTO, taking into account our national interests. We also form negotiations on formation of the Customs Union, taking into account the interests of our national economies. Each party will take into account the priorities of economic development of their national economies."  Z. Aytzhanova also stated that "now WTO has more than 12 members of the organization who are also members of the Customs Unions." The Industry Minister of Kazakhstan said that all three countries are now at different stages of the negotiation process to join WTO. "Russia has finished negotiations with 65 countries, Kazakhstan with 22 out of 27 and Belarus - with 10 countries."

October 23, 2009  WTO.  India, along with other countries, today shot down a concerted move by the United States, Australia, and Canada to prepare draft scheduling of commitments in Doha services negotiations based on signals made by trade ministers during the failed ministerial meeting last year. At an “enchilada” meeting convened by the chair for Doha services negotiations, Ambassador Fernando De Mateo, India said it could not agree to draft services schedules, to be prepared on the basis of signals made by trade ministers in July 2008, saying those were contingent on several other issues in the stalled Doha trade negotiations. The enchilada meeting is a forum for select trade envoys to advance the Doha services negotiations in which India has some demands. Developing countries have opposed preparing draft schedule of commitments without first finalizing the market access commitments in agriculture and industrial goods as mandated under the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration.

Besides, the draft schedules which have no legal finality is invariably used as a bargaining platform for more demands without addressing the outstanding issues in the Doha services negotiations. “We have ensured the burial of the intermediate product being pushed by the US, Canada and Australia,” a trade envoy said, suggesting it involved preparing a draft schedule of services commitments reflecting the signals made last year. India and other countries also succeeded today in placing the importance of having strong rules for GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) rules and adequate disciplines for domestic regulation to ensure that market access commitments are adequately implemented. World Trade Organization (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy would inform trade envoys about the state of play in Doha trade negotiations, said trade diplomats. “Lamy will like the world to believe that there is an intensification of Doha negotiations but the truth is nothing is happening on the ground because of several factors, especially the US’ reluctance to make any bold moves in Doha trade negotiations,” said a trade envoy from an industrialized country. Select trade envoys, however, agreed to step up their bilateral and plurilateral exchanges in the Doha services cluster during the week starting from November 9 so to get more clarity on the market access outcome- akin to what is being pursued in the agriculture and industrial goods.

October 22, 2009  European Commission.  A shipment of generic drugs, coming from India, which were meant for Latin American Countries has been seized for infringement of intellectual property rights. Oxfam and the independent Health Action International report state that the generic delivery is legitimate under WTO rules. India and Brazil will file a  complaint against the Netherlands before the World Trade Organization (WTO) as it seized a shipment of anti-HIV drugs headed from India via Europe to Brazil, Colombia and Nigeria. "Although in transit, the patent law of the EU member state was called on by the right holder, and this was also the basis of the detainment by Dutch customs," Sophie Bloemen from Health Action International told IPS by phone from Brussels.

The shipments which were headed for Peru, Columbia, Ecuador, Mexico and many other countries included medicines for treatment for AIDS, Cardiac problem, schizophrenia, dementia . “The EU has argued it needs to check for counterfeits as these are dangerous for public health," Bloemen tells IPS. "But counterfeits actually relate to a trademark infringement, not a patent infringement.” “So these are two different things, and you check for them in a different way too. Actually customs officials are incapable of checking adequately for patent infringement as it requires lab tests." "The EU is increasing pressure on developing country governments to surrender their rights to obtain affordable, generic medicines in order to protect public health, even though these rights are guaranteed under global trade rules," the report says.

“The EU is guilty of double standards," says Elise Ford, Oxfam head of EU advocacy. "One rule for the rich and another for the poor. A crackdown on European pharmaceutical prices is happening alongside a concerted effort to further push intellectual property rules that prevent poor countries from buying affordable medicines”. The seizing policy is also increasing the cost of medicine. "Millions of poor people have to pay for medicines out of their own pockets, so even a small price rise can make them unaffordable," says Ford. "Europe's policies are directly responsible for this scandal."

The report also discusses few policies of EU like promotion of a new global framework to enforce intellectual property rules, obstructing growth at the World Health Organization regarding new models of research and development that fulfill health needs in developing countries which are ultimately damaging access to medicines in developing countries. "It's time that the EU co-ordinate its policies. Both the European Commission (the executive arm of the EU) and member states must promote access to healthcare in their development policies and access to affordable medicines through their trade policy," says Ford.

October 21, 2009  China.  China will impose tariffs of up to 36 percent on some imported nylon products to protect its domestic industry from suspected dumping in Beijing's latest maneuver amid trade spats with the U.S. The decision applies to Nylon 6, or polycaprolactam, from the United States, European Union countries, Russia and Taiwan. The tariff rate set on U.S. companies is much higher than that for other countries. Nylon 6 is used to make many products such as toothbrushes, socks and robes. Starting today China will require foreign nylon makers to pay the tariff as a security deposit. China's imports of Nylon 6 surged from 183,000 tons in 2005 to 402,300 tons in 2007 and rose another 21 percent in the first nine months of 2008.

October 21, 2009  Argentina.  Argentina has filed a writ before the General Council of the World Trade Organization requesting that the organization investigate subsidies to production distorting international trade, a report in Geneva said. The government complained about "fiscal stimulus plans to manufacturing industries and financial services" adopted by "some members." However, it failed to specify which of the members of the organizations could be involved. The file was being debated today and tomorrow by the General Council of the WTO, formed by its 153 member states. The petition accuses countries of "having deepened the current crisis" after the adoption of protectionist measures, thus "affecting competitiveness from developing nations unable to subsidize production."

October 20, 2009  WTO membership.  After talks at WTO headquarters in Geneva, Maksim Medvedkov, Russia`s veteran WTO negotiator, said that the three countries - Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia - would continue their separate membership talks. However, they would negotiate on the basis of a common customs tariff that is due to be implemented from the beginning of next year, with the aim of joining the WTO simultaneously. Belarus' spokesman, Andrey Papow reiterated that the three countries would be coordinating closely on the talks. “It is the firm position of our countries and it has remained totally unchanged following the talks in Geneva,” he said. “Another thing is that we have concluded, following  numerous consultations with other partners, that despite the fact that it is, in principle, possible to enter the WTO as a single customs union, such a process of joining the WTO is very complicated and lengthy due to the lack of precedents, pure technicalities and procedural matters, and it would push us away from the main goal of accessing the organization.”

October 19, 2009  Cotton subsidies.  The U.S. and European Union are likely to eventually meet African cotton producers’ demands to scale back farmer subsidies, World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy said. The U.S. and EU have committed in the Doha round of global trade negotiations to reducing levels of subsidies by 70 percent to 80 percent and to making deeper and faster cuts in programs for cotton, Lamy stated - "the only missing item is a precise figure". Representatives of poor countries attending a meeting in Dar es Salaam on strategy for the Doha talks called on WTO member nations to allow duty-free and quota-free access for cotton and its byproducts. About 15 million farmers grow cotton in the sub-Sahara region of Africa, the world’s poorest continent. A ministerial-level WTO conference is scheduled for Geneva in late November aimed at evaluating progress on the Doha round. Lamy stated that governments need to work harder to meet a treaty-signing deadline of 2010. A resolution of U.S. cotton-subsidy policy is part of a broader agriculture program and “we’re nearly there,” Lamy said. “It’s a matter of weeks or months.”

October 16, 2009  EU and South Korea.  The European Union and South Korea approved the world’s biggest free-trade deal since 1994, bolstering efforts to emerge from the deepest global recession in seven decades. The agreement, signed today in Brussels, will expand the 76 billion-euro ($114 billion) trade relationship by scrapping import duties and other barriers, making 99 percent of commerce duty-free within five years. The accord, which European automakers oppose, still needs the backing of South Korean lawmakers and EU governments.
The deal struck by EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton and her Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Hoon, boosts Europe’s campaign to sidestep World Trade Organization efforts to open markets. Talks aimed at reaching a global accord have been stalled for eight years as international leaders warn rising protectionism may deepen the world’s economic slump. A 2007 U.S.-Korea trade deal remains stuck in Congress.

October 15, 2009  U.S. and Russia.  The United States is supportive of Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stated.  Clinton said the United States believed that within a global range innovation should be encouraged through consolidating financial stability and ensuring free trade and investment.  The United States and Russia should become partners, said Clinton, for the sake of both countries and the two peoples, and for the future of the entire world.  Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed in early June to form a customs bloc and seek joint accession to the WTO, a decision opposed by the European Union and the United States. First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov confirmed in August that Russia will join the WTO as a single nation, but it will keep close coordination with Belarus and Kazakhstan during the accession negotiations.  Russia, which has been seeking WTO membership for more than 15 years, is the largest economy still outside the global trade body.

October 14, 2009  WTO.  Minor barriers to trade could slow the speed of a global economic recovery even if protectionism has not reached the high levels seen in the past, the head of the World Trade Organization. Speaking at a conference in Berlin, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said a decline in trade volumes appeared to be at an end and the global economy on track for a fragile recovery. The WTO expects world trade to contract 10 percent this year, hit by the economic crisis and tight credit conditions which have been particularly tough for importers and exporters. The organization has pushed countries to sign up to a sweeping global trade agreement which has been under negotiation since 2001. A successful agreement in the so-called Doha round of trade negotiations could help governments unwind their massive stimulus packages and spur economic growth, Lamy said.

October 13, 2009  Philippine liquor tax.  Talks aimed at resolving a trade dispute over Philippine taxes on imported liquor failed to deliver a compromise last week. No decision has yet been made as to whether the World Trade Organization (WTO) will be asked to step in, although the European Commission (EC) is no longer interested in continuing the bilateral negotiations. The Philippines, however, hopes further talks will still be held. Consultations were held last Thursday and Friday in Manila after the EC complained that Republic Act 9334 unfairly increased excise tax rates by 50% for imported spirits, compared to only 30% for locally made spirits. Officials from the US, another major liquor exporter, attended the meeting as well.

October 13, 2009  Sectoral tariff reductions.  Demands by developed countries for sectoral tariff reductions have replaced differences over farm tariffs as the big issue in the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks. Under the so-called sectorals, negotiating countries have to agree to a road map to cut import duties in some sectors more drastically than the general tariff reduction. Sectoral initiatives have been proposed in 14 areas, including auto parts, bicycles, chemicals, electronics, fish and forestry products, gems, and toys. World Trade Organization (WTO) talks collapsed in July 2008 over a so-called special safeguards mechanism (SSM) that sought to provide a safety net to developing countries to raise tariffs in excess of current ceilings if imports of some agricultural products increased beyond a certain limit. Developed and developing countries failed to agree on the details of the proposal, causing the talks to stall. WTO member countries in September resolved to conclude negotiations by the end of 2010.

October 12, 2009  U.S. celebrates Columbus Day.

October 12, 2009  Canada celebrates Thanksgiving.

October 9, 2009 Montenegro.  Montenegro will not become a member of the World Trade Organization this year after bilateral talks with Ukraine failed to solve thorny issues in that process. Montenegro refused to reduce customs tariffs, as requested by Ukraine, stating that it needed to hold further consultations with agriculture representatives on that issue, as well as others. The third round of talks thus ended in stalemate with the majority of representatives preparing to go back to square one.

October 8, 2009 Food labels. Canada has asked for a World Trade Organization panel to settle a dispute with the U.S. over so- called country-of-origin labeling rules, saying it harms agricultural trade. The U.S. law requires food processors to identify the countries where meat and some fresh produce were produced. The two countries traded C$37 billion ($34.8 billion) of agricultural products in 2008, Canada’s trade department said in a statement. The rules also require U.S. processors to segregate Canadian animals and their meat at their facilities, according to the statement, leading some processors to shun Canadian products.  The panel’s final report may take as long as nine months to publish, Canada’s statement said.

October 8, 2009 Poultry. The United States is expected to request a World Trade Organization panel to end a long-running dispute with the European Union over Brussels' ban on imports of U.S. chicken, diplomats with knowledge of the case said. Consultations between both sides at the WTO in Geneva have failed to resolve the 11-year row over EU restrictions on chlorinated-treated poultry.

October 8, 2009 WTO and Airbus' 350.  A World Trade Organization ruling that European Union governments illegally subsidized Airbus will have serious implications, including on the plane maker's crucial A350 XWB program, according to experts at a recent panel on the decision. The American Enterprise Institute panel, "The WTO Boeing vs. Airbus Case: Implications for WTO Subsidy Rules and for the Future of Commercial Aircraft Competition," happened Sept. 21.  The preliminary WTO ruling is still confidential. But enough details of leaked out for educated speculation. The panel appears to have ruled that European launch aid amounted to illegal "actionable" subsidies and more serious prohibited export subsidies but declined to find European launch aid to be a single illegal program, meaning opponents must contest each instance of aid. And, while Boeing and Airbus theoretically go head-to-head in the single-aisle market, with the 737 and A320 families, respectively, "the market shares have been decided a long time ago". Airlines have chosen which family to use and "are unlikely to shift".

October 7, 2009 China.  China claims great "dissatisfaction" with the European Union's final ruling of imposing anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese seamless steel pipes, the Ministry of Commerce states. The five-year duties, ranging from 17.7 percent to 39.2 percent, were imposed on evidence that the Chinese imports might cause material injury or threat, the EU said. China has claimed repeatedly that the threat of material injury is strictly defined by the World Trade Organization rules and rarely cited as a reason for anti-dumping ruling practice as the WTO members were "highly prudent" in dealing with such cases. Chinese authorities have argued that the imposition of anti-dumping duties should be based on findings of material injury or threat, rather on accusations or speculation. China added that the EU had failed to honor its commitment opposing protectionism and the Chinese firms would resolutely safeguard their interests.

October 6, 2009 EU.  The European Union has closed an investigation into Uruguayan taxation of spirit imports after the Latin American country removed “unfair barriers,” thereby avoiding a complaint at the World Trade Organization. The EU opened the probe after the Scotch Whisky Association said obstacles including a discriminatory excise tax hindered sales in Uruguay. Other barriers included a lack of transparency of excise taxes in general, exclusion of whiskies matured for three or more years from the lowest category of taxation and requirements to affix tax stamps on imported whiskies and pre- pay excise taxes at the time of customs clearance.

The EU has filed complaints at the WTO against Philippine and Indian taxes that discourage sales by companies such as London-based Diageo Plc and Paris-based Pernod Ricard SA by imposing higher levies on imported distilled spirits than on liquor produced domestically. The 27-nation EU is the world’s biggest exporter of spirits. The volume and value of exports of Scotch whisky to Uruguay has climbed more than 30 percent to 18.2 million pounds ($29 million) since the law change was enacted. The association complained to the EU in 2004 because rather than using the actual transaction value of liquor at the point of first sale as the taxable base, Uruguay divided the spirits into categories on a price-per-liter basis, putting the EU products in the highest-priced category.  Uruguay agreed to change its legislation so there is a single tax rate, removing the discrimination.

October 5, 2009 Philippines and EU.  THE World Trade Organization (WTO) will commence the consultation process between the Philippines and European Union (EU) this week over the alleged discriminatory excise-tax system on liquor products, with the United States participating in the talks as a potential complainant. The EU complained that the excise-tax regime in the country on spirits violates international trade rules because it discriminates against imported brands. “Imported spirits including Spanish brandy and Scotch whisky can face taxes 10 to 50 times higher than those on domestic products, and exports to the Philippines have fallen significantly as a result,” the EU said earlier. The US will be joining the discussions as under the WTO rules, another member-country may participate based on “potential interest.”

October 2, 2009  Chinese tires.  China has filed a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over steep U.S. tariffs imposed on Chinese-made tires. Under the WTO's dispute settlement system, the two countries will now have 60 days to try to resolve the dispute through consultations. If consultations fail, China can go further by requesting a WTO panel to investigate and rule on the case. The U.S. government's decision to impose special tariffs on tire imports from China violated WTO rules and was an abuse of trade remedy measures, China has stated. "China's request for talks with the U.S. is a right as a WTO member and is a practical move in order to defend its own interests", China declared. The U.S. decision took effect on Sept. 26, causing car and light truck tires imported from China imposed tariffs of 35percent, 30 percent and 25 percent respectively for the next three years. The U.S. International Trade Commission had recommended 45% to 55% tariffs on such merchandise.

October 1, 2009  ICANN.  A longtime agreement in which the U.S. Department of Commerce has oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is due to expire Wednesday, but that may not be the end of the relationship. While ICANN isn't talking, some observers expect a new type of agreement to be announced, with the U.S. government sharing oversight of the nonprofit organization that controls the Internet's domain name system with other countries. This new type of agreement would allow ICANN to become more independent, while addressing concerns from several other countries that the U.S. has too much control over ICANN. The new agreement would create several oversight boards, with international representation, Palage said. The Economist reported last week that a new agreement, called an affirmation of commitments, will replace the existing pact between the U.S. government and ICANN. The Department of Commerce and ICANN have operated under a series of agreements laying out expectations for the nonprofit since November 1998.

September 30, 2009  Canada.  Canada's increasing list of trade negotiations could soon include talks with Asia-Pacific nations as countries around the Pacific rim, encouraged by interest from the United States, begin to turn their attention to the possibility of a large free-trade area in the Asia-Pacific region. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade states that it is considering joining negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP) because of the vast opportunities for Canadian business in the region. The Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP) was originally signed by New Zealand, Chile, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam in 2005, entering into force in 2006. The aim of the four founding members was to create a trade agreement that could serve as a model for the region and potentially attract new members. If enough members sign on, the humble beginnings of the TPP could form the basis of a strategically important Asia-Pacific free trade area. The TPP has attracted the attention of a number of countries along the Pacific rim, including the United States, Australia, Vietnam and Peru, who have all said they will participate in negotiations, which can be done prior to deciding their membership. A number of other countries, including Japan, Korea and Mexico, have kept a close eye on developments.

September 29, 2009 EU and U.S.  The European Union and the United States are holding talks on forging a pact with OECD countries and China to eliminate duties on green goods as part of incentives to Beijing in a potential global climate deal. EU diplomats state that under a plan being discussed by Brussels and Washington, the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and China would agree a global pact to phase out import tariffs on goods such as wind turbines, renewables and green technologies. But any deal is unlikely to include environmentally friendly hybrid cars, the diplomats said. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative's office said the United States and the EU had been pushing within the Doha round of world trade talks since November 2007 for a deal to cut tariffs on environmental goods "and continue to work closely in pushing for concrete progress."

September 28, 2009 G-20 and G-8.  As reported in The Council on Foreign Relations - "President Obama's announcement that the Group of 20 (G-20) would permanently replace the G8 as the leading forum for multilateral economic coordination is the most profound development in global governance since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995. It underscores an ongoing shift of economic power to emerging countries that are demanding a greater say in governing world trade and global finance.

The days when a cozy group of Western nations could set the global economic rules are over. Clearly, any global steering committee like the G8 that includes Canada (population 33 million, GDP $1.4 trillion) and Italy (58 million, $2.07 trillion) but excludes China (1.33 billion, $3.25 trillion) and India (1.15 billion, $1.15 trillion) is hopelessly out of date.

The G-20 is a far better reflection of current economic realities. Its members account for more than 85 percent of global GDP, 80 percent of international trade, and two-thirds of the planet's population. Perhaps most importantly, China, holder of the world's largest currency reserves and already the world's third-largest economy and (soon) second leading exporter, is now in the tent. U.S. officials clearly hope that China will take on a more responsible role in the world economy, doing its part to address global currency imbalances and opening its markets to foreign trade.

That is not to say the G-20 is perfect. There is an inevitable trade-off between representation and effectiveness, and the G-20 lurches too far toward expansiveness by including relatively minor players like Argentina and Turkey. If effectiveness is the goal, a better case could be made for simply a modest expansion of the G8, along the lines of the G8 plus 5—China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico—that has been meeting since the 2007 G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany."

September 25, 2009 G-20.  The head of the European Commission said Thursday that G20 leaders should push for a rapid global trade deal if they want to demonstrate their unity in the face of financial crisis. Speaking before the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said a quick conclusion to the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks would be a major boost to the flagging global economy. Launched in 2001 in the Qatari capital of Doha, the World Trade Organization talks were aimed at boosting global commerce to help developing countries, but deadlock between the major trading blocs has dashed repeated attempts to forge a new pact. At the G20 London summit in April, leaders reaffirmed their commitment to fight protectionism and to reach an "ambitious and balanced conclusion" to the long-stalled Doha round. Barosso said the Pittsburgh G20 summit would be "pivotal" in proving the international community can maintain the high levels of cooperation seen since the global financial crisis began in earnest a year ago.

September 24, 2009 G-20.  City and county officials met for the last planning session before the commencement of the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh tomorrow, and everything seems to be on track. Economic issues will feature front and centre when financial leaders of the G20 group of nations meet for the two-day summit. Together, G20 nations make up about 85 per cent of the world's economic activity. It is expected that previous stated European outrage over bankers' runaway pay will be a key issue. Another somewhat divisive economic issue is the question of when and how central bankers should turn off the taps to the flood of money they used to stimulate the economy. Despite the nascent signs of economic recovery, fears remain that curtailing government spending and hiking interest rates too soon could result in a "double dip" recession.

September 23, 2009 China.  China has appealed a World Trade Organization ruling that found its curbs on the sale of books, films and music from the U.S. are unfair. WTO judges concluded on Aug. 12 that China was violating its free-trade commitments by requiring importers to channel foreign publications and audiovisual products through state-run companies. The panel also urged China to allow foreign companies to sell music over the Internet. U.S.-Chinese trade relations have soured amid allegations about market-access restrictions, trade protectionism, copyright infringement, currency manipulation and claims that Chinese exporters are undercutting higher-cost American manufacturers. The U.S. has lodged eight complaints against China at the Geneva-based WTO - more than any other government - while four of China’s five trade complaints are against the U.S. While China previously tended to backtrack when a panel was requested and settle matters diplomatically, the Asian nation has become more confident about legal battles and now makes full use of the WTO’s dispute settlement system. The U.S., the world’s biggest exporter of entertainment products, sees higher sales of cultural goods as a way to narrow its trade deficit with China, which totaled $103 billion in the first half of 2009. While foreign films and music are popular in China, suppliers face competition from the country’s thriving black market. President Barack Obama’s trade chief, Ron Kirk, has made getting China, Russia and other nations to clamp down on piracy of American-made goods one of his top goals.

September 23, 2009 Russia.  Russia has received indication from a U.S. official that it may be able to join the World Trade Organization as early as 2010. Issues including intellectual property rights in Russia, as well as a ban on imports of cryptographic equipment and restrictions on U.S. pork and poultry continue to hamper Russia’s bid.

September 23, 2009 Palestinian Authority.  The Palestinian Authority will seek observer status at the World Trade Organization as part of a process for building state institutions, an official minister has stated. "We are seeking observer status at the WTO, as a preparation for statehood."  The process of joining the WTO would require the Palestinians to undergo reforms, some of which are badly needed in any event. The move is part of the PA's plan to build fully functioning government institutions.  Palestinian Premier Salam Fayyad said last month he intends to create all the institutions of statehood so that a Palestinian state can come into being in two years, even if peace talks with Israel fail or remain stalled. Israel has objected to a unilateral declaration of statehood.  The Palestinians have an observer seat at the UN, which grants them a right to speak, but no voting powers. Joining the WTO fully could take five years or longer - the organization, which aims to liberalize trade, has a plethora of rules, regulations and requirement for membership and adjusting to them can take an extended period of time. It is not expected that there will be an Israeli objection to the request for observer status - the WTO was a technical and economic organization that did not deal with political issues. Israel is part of the WTO, which has 153 members, not all of which are states.

September 22, 2009  Russia.  Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Russia aimed to finish negotiating its entry into the World Trade Organization next year, although various stumbling blocks remained. Among the complications, Russia is negotiating not only for itself. It wants to join the WTO at the same time as two partners in a customs union, Kazakhstan and Belarus, even though the two countries are far less developed economically. Of Belarus, he said: "they're ready to change legislation and tariff barriers. They're ready for compromises." While the three countries should negotiate on the same schedule and join the WTO at the same time, Mr. Shuvalov said, he left himself an out if that arrangement slowed negotiations too much. The heads of sovereign nations can always make changes in their plans, he said. Among the toughest issues remaining in discussions with the U.S. over the WTO, he said, were the levels of allowable subsidies for Russian state-owned enterprises, an appeals process to handle Russian prohibitions on the import of U.S. pork and veal; toughened intellectual property agreements; and reducing Russian barriers to imports of cryptographic equipment.

September 21, 2009  G-20 summit.   An anti-war group plans to set up a tent city during the Group of Twenty economic summit next week to focus attention on the plight of women and children made refugees by war.The group, Code Pink, will be among many groups and thousands of activists aiming to use the G-20 summit to spotlight causes including the environment and social injustice. Protests can also turn violent. In 1999, 50,000 protesters shut down World Trade Organization sessions in Seattle as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. There were some 600 arrests and $3 million in property damage. At the most recent G-20 meeting, held in London in April, thousands of people protested, and one man died after a confrontation with police. Domenico Lombardi, who sits on the advisory board of the G-20 research group that provides materials to the G-20 participants - 19 world leaders and representatives of the European Union who control more than 85 percent of the world's money - said the summit is a good target for protesters.

September 18, 2009  WTO talks.  The head of the World Trade Organization warned Wednesday that talks to forge a new global trade agreement have to speed up if a deal is to be reached next year. Trade ministers from some 30 countries pledged earlier this month to complete the so-called Doha round in 2010, nine years and several missed deadlines after it was launched in Qatar's capital. Lamy said he would travel to the Group of 20 meeting of leaders from rich and developing countries in Pittsburgh next week and hoped to present leaders of the major industrialized and developing economies with a clear timetable for clinching a deal, provided certain long-standing differences can be overcome. The Doha round aims to increase world trade through a broad compromise that would let developing countries sell more produce to the rich world. In return, the U.S., 27-country European Union and Japan would get new chances for their manufacturers and service providers to enter the emerging markets of Brazil, China and India.

September 17, 2009  U.S. and Brazil.  The top US trade official urged Brazil Wednesday to go easy on up to 800 million dollars in trade reprisals it can impose on the United States under a WTO ruling on US cotton subsidies. Brazil has yet to announce what US products, services and intellectual properties it will hit under the authorization from the World Trade Organization delivered August 31. The WTO found that US subsidies for cotton broke international trade rules and damaged exports for Brazil's cotton industry. Brazilian officials claim the potential total retaliation is 800 million dollars this year. Last year, exchanges amounted to 63 billion dollars and US direct investment in Brazil in 2007 was 41.6 billion dollars. Outside the cotton subsidies issue, the United States and Brazil are also clashing on US protection of its ethanol production. Brazil, the second-biggest ethanol producer in the world after the United States, sees the US policy as hurting its export prospects.

September 16, 2009  Russia.  Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday accused the United States of "blocking" Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization. "Had it not been for the extremely cautious U.S. policy on Russia's accession to the WTO -- or, to be frank, had it not been for blocking on the part of the U.S. -- we would have been there a long time ago," Medvedev stated.  Russia has been negotiating its accession into the WTO since 1993 but various issues including enforcement of copyright laws and meat exports have halted the country's acceptance in the past. The WTO is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations; aimed at helping producers of goods and services, exporters and importers conduct their business in a fair and balanced atmosphere. There are currently 153 member states in the organization. Russia is the world's largest economy that still not a member state.

September 15, 2009  Chinese tires. President Barack Obama downplayed the possibility that his imposition of tariffs on imported tires from China would spark a cycle of retaliation.  “We’re not going to see a trade war,” Obama said yesterday in an interview. “There are some tensions around this, no doubt about it. But my message is very simple: We have rules on the books.” China called the tariffs an “abuse” yesterday and filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization. China also said it will probe whether U.S. chicken and auto products are being dumped at below-market prices or receive unfair government subsidies. Obama said Sept. 11 that he will impose duties of 35 percent on $1.8 billion of automobile tires from China, acting on a petition by the United Steelworkers union.  Existing rules must be enforced to gain support from lawmakers and the American public for future trade agreements, Obama said in the interview, when asked what he will tell China’s President Hu Jintao at the G20 meeting next week in Pittsburgh. The U.S. and China will try to make sure the tensions that erupted over tires don’t disrupt a commercial relationship that totaled $409 billion last year. China, the second- largest U.S. trading partner after Canada, is also the largest holder of U.S. debt with $776 billion.

September 14, 2009 U.S.  In response to the World Trade Organization Arbitration Panel decision on the U.S. Department of Agriculture export credit guarantee ("GSM-102") program released Aug. 31, the North American Export Grain Association, National Cotton Council, CoBank, Farm Credit Council, U.S. Rice Producers Association, and National Council of Farmer Cooperatives released the following statement:

We are very disappointed that the panel based its decision on the GSM program as it existed in 2005, and failed to recognize the significant changes that have been made to the GSM-102 program since 2005. As a result, we urge the U.S. government to request a new Compliance Panel to update this ruling to reflect the changes in the program made by Congress and the USDA since 2005.

The extent of the program changes is demonstrated in the President's budget for fiscal year 2010. According to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, in 2010 the GSM program will generate a positive return to the federal government of $54 million. In other words, the revenues from guarantee premiums charged to program participants more than offset the cost of program operations, including any credit losses. Under the WTO panel's obsolete ruling, Brazil would be entitled to place tariffs or other import penalties on an amount of U.S. products based on the use, each year in the future, of a program that is clearly not a subsidy.

The WTO panel also failed to recognize the benefits that have accrued to Brazil's banks as a result of their significant participation in the GSM-102 program. These benefits far outweigh the costs arrived at by the arbitration panel. Ironically, Brazil's banks have been by far the largest users of the GSM-102 program since 2002--the year in which Brazil initiated its WTO case against the United States. Since that time, Brazilian banks have taken more than $5.4 BILLION in loans under the GSM-102 program.  On July 1, 2005, USDA adopted measures to bring its three export credit guarantee programs into compliance with WTO obligations. USDA adopted risk-based guarantee premiums for the GSM-102 Program and the Supplier Credit Guarantee Program and suspended the GSM-103 program.

September 11, 2009 U.S.  The White House says President Obama intends to nominate Michael Punke to be U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization. Not having someone in this slot threatened to slow world trade talks, which appear to be ready to blossom. Punke would take over from long-time U.S. trade diplomat Peter Allgeier, who stepped down as ambassador to the WTO. Punke began his government career in 1991 as international trade counsel to Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat who is currently chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He was a senior policy adviser in the U.S. Trade Representative's office in the mid-1990s after a two-year stint in the White House under former President Bill Clinton.

September 10, 2009 China.  China has eliminated additional charges on imported auto parts, starting Sept 1 this year, the top planning body said on Wednesday, ending a two-year dispute with the World Trade Organization. The WTO found last year that China's additional import tariffs on auto parts accounting for 60 percent or more of the finished product's value broke international trade rules. It turned down China's appeal last December. The auto parts case was the first in which the WTO formed a panel to review whether China was meeting its commitments. The decision to revoke the tariff was made to "meet the needs of the adjustment and development of the country's auto industry," the National Development and Reform Commission said. China began to impose the additional tariff on auto parts in 2005, to prevent foreign car manufacturers from shipping partially-assembled vehicles for final assembly in China.

September 9, 2009 WTO negotiating groups.  While a precise count is difficult, there are more than 20 formal groupings, each representing a particular set of interests in the World Trade Organization (WTO). This is apart from major players like the US or EU. Some of the most significant of negotiating groups are the G-20, the Cairns group, the African group, Cotton 4, G-33, the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) and LDCs (least-developed countries). In many cases, countries are part of more than one grouping, since a particular group may address one aspect of their concerns while another might be more effective in dealing with a different set of concerns. For instance, Brazil and Argentina are part of both the G-20 and Cairns group. Similarly, India is in the G-20 as well as the G-33.

What is the G-20? Not to be confused with the G-20 that is holding its summit meeting in Pittsburgh later this month, the G-20 you hear about in the context of WTO negotiations is a bloc that initially started out with 20 members but now has 22. All of them are from the developing world, but in most cases they are middle-income economies with relatively large sizes and fast growth rates. Thus, India, Brazil, China, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico are all part of this grouping.

What is the Cairns group? The Cairns group, which now consists of 19 members, is primarily a grouping of countries with significant export interests in agriculture. It includes some developed countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well as several developing countries like Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The focus of this group is clearly on opening up markets for agricultural exports.

Why are the LDCs a separate group? It might seem odd that the LDCs would stand as a separate group since their clout is bound to be small. However, given the fact that WTO negotiations have recognized that the least-developed need some preferential treatment even in relation to developing economies, a grouping of the LDCs makes sense to address their specific concerns. LDC currently has 32 WTO members, mostly from Africa, but with some from Asia as well.

What is the Cotton 4? This is a group of four economies Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali, which are heavily dependent on cotton as the name suggests. All of these countries are also part of the African group, the ACP and the LDC group. However, they formed Cotton 4 specifically to deal with their interests in the area of cotton.

September 8, 2009 WTO talks.  Trade ministers scored a “breakthrough” in their efforts to inject momentum in stalled global trade talks and negotiators will resume work in 10 days in a bid to secure a deal next year, India’s commerce chief states. World Trade Organization negotiators will gather in Geneva on Sept. 14, more than a year after ministerial-level discussions collapsed over a spat between the U.S. and India on farm tariffs. The talks have moved in fits and starts for eight years as industrialized and emerging markets clashed over how to open up trade.  A commerce accord will help the world beat the economic crisis that the International Monetary Fund predicts will lead to a 1.4 percent contraction in the global economy this year. Group of 20 leaders meeting in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24-25 will probably push a trade accord as part of the cure for the crisis, as well as a bulwark against protectionism.  WTO chief Pascal Lamy has estimated that a deal would add as much as $100 billion to the global economy while the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics calculated that an agreement could boost global gross domestic product by up to $700 billion a year.

September 8, 2009 WTO ruling.  A House Democrat states that the World Trade Organization has ruled that the European Union provided illegal subsidies to Airbus for its aircraft. The spokesman who was briefed by U.S. trade officials of the confidential decision, says the WTO ruling confirms a complaint by the U.S. in 2004 that shows "all Airbus aircraft have received illegal subsidies and that these have caused material harm to Boeing. In its suit, the U.S. claimed such funding for Airbus distorted the market place and created unfair competition in a market worth $3 trillion over the next two decades. The EU is likely to appeal and the companies must wait for a decision next year in an Airbus challenge to what it sees as unfair U.S. government support for Boeing Co. 

September 7, 2009 U.S. celebrates Labor Day while Canada celebrates Labour Day.

September 4, 2009 Boeing - Airbus.  Boeing Co. and the U.S. are set to win a case at the World Trade Organization over $15 billion in European government loans to Airbus SAS, the world’s largest aircraft maker, U.S. trade lawyers and officials state.  A panel of WTO judges is scheduled to rule tomorrow on a U.S. complaint over loans that the U.K., Spain, Germany and France provided Airbus over four decades. It will be a preliminary ruling in a five-year dispute over aid between Toulouse, France-based Airbus and Chicago-based Boeing.
The case is the biggest in the 14-year history of the WTO, and could cast a cloud over the commercial relationship between the U.S. and Europe, the world’s largest. It may also reshape funding for the two largest plane makers. WTO judges are scheduled to rule within six months on a European Union counter-claim against U.S. assistance that helped Boeing develop the new 787 Dreamliner and other aircraft. The EU cited military contracts, NASA research grants and state tax breaks.

September 3, 2009  Doha.  The Obama administration's first formal meeting with the world's trade ministers is likely to underscore how the U.S.'s reticence to pursue a free trade agenda in the face of domestic opposition has become the main obstacle to moving forward on global trade talks. The talks Sept. 3 and 4 in New Delhi between officials from 36 countries -- including U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk -- are the first since a summit in Geneva last July failed to kick start global trade talks. The so-called Doha round of trade talks was launched in November 2001 as a grand bargain of global commerce. The deal was simple: Europe and the U.S. would open up their markets to agricultural trade and, in exchange, get better access for manufacturers and service providers in booming markets such as China and India. Since last summer, enough has changed to give World Trade Organization director Pascal Lamy hope of reviving the eight-year-old negotiations -- long stymied by intransigence on the part of countries like India and western reluctance to do away with politically popular agricultural subsidies. The European Union, U.S. and India have new leadership in their trade offices. And economies and trade flows are stabilizing after the worst of the financial crisis.

September 2, 2009  U.S.  The World Trade Organization used outdated information in allowing Brazil to impose sanctions on U.S. goods to compensate for subsidies paid to American cotton farmers, according to the National Cotton Council.  The ruling is based “almost exclusively” on data from 2005, when U.S. cotton production peaked, and doesn’t take into account policy changes made in 2008, the Cotton Council said today in a statement on its web site.   Estimated U.S. cotton production in the 12 months ended July 31 was 46 percent less than the output of four years earlier, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Production in Brazil, China and India combined rose 27 percent in the same period, the data show. Brazil can impose sanctions valued at $294.7 million against U.S. goods, the WTO ruled today. That’s about 10 percent of the $2.68 billion sought by the South American nation. 

September 1, 2009  Brazil and U.S.  American goods will face around $295 million in annual sanctions as a result of the United States' failure to eliminate illegal subsidies to U.S. cotton growers, the World Trade Organization ruled yesterday. The result was disappointing for Brazil, which has won a series of rulings against the U.S. over the last seven years. The Latin American country had sought to target American goods and drug patents for $2.5 billion worth of economic retaliation. The WTO ruled that the sanctions should vary depending on U.S. payments each year. Arbitrators used 2006 as a base year for the ruling, and said U.S. payments would have to increase significantly for Brazil to be allowed to punish American drug patents. "The cumulated amount of countermeasures to which Brazil is entitled to is $294.7 million," the WTO said in a two-part ruling totaling 269 pages. Washington had argued that the award should not exceed $30 million. "While we remain disappointed with the outcome of this dispute, we are pleased that the arbitrators awarded Brazil far below the amount of countermeasures it asked for," said Carol Guthrie, spokeswoman for U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Guthrie said the U.S. was also pleased that the WTO rejected Brazil's request for "unlimited" sanctions on U.S. patents and trademarks, and for a one-time award of $350 million in penalties for a subsidy Washington has already repealed.

September 1, 2009  South Korea and Canada.  The World Trade Organization agreed today to decide whether a South Korean ban on imports of Canadian beef imposed six years ago during an outbreak of so- called mad cow disease breaks global trade rules.  South Korea halted Canadian beef imports in May 2003 after Canada reported its first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, which has been linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide. Eating meat from BSE-infected animals has been tied to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, an incurable human illness that destroys brain tissue. Canada has reported 16 cases of mad cow disease. Before the ban was imposed, South Korea was the fourth- largest market for Canadian beef, with annual shipments valued at C$50 million ($46 million). South Korea reopened its market to beef from the U.S. in June 2008 after also barring it in 2003 during a mad cow scare.

 September 1, 2009  Europe. European governments are prepared to continue their support for the Airbus A350 even if the World Trade Organization rules that previous aid was illegal. "It has always been our position that any support for the A350 has no relation to the current WTO litigation," an EU spokesman said on Friday. The WTO is expected to rule this week on whether Europe violated trade rules with billions of dollars in launch aid for previous Airbus models, and the U.S. contends that $4.7 billion in aid for the A350 continues the same controversial policy.

August 31, 2009  Meeting in India.  Trade ministers will meet in New Delhi this week to inject new impetus into the faltering Doha round trade talks in the run-up to the G20 summit in Pittsburgh. The aim, according to host India, is to "re-energize" the Doha talks, now in their eighth year, and set a timetable for completion, rather than engaging in substantive negotiations. "As the objective is to resume and intensify the Doha Round negotiations, technical discussions are not envisaged. The discussion will mainly focus on the best way to spark the multilateral negotiations to move the round to a quick closure," India states.  But some of the main players may use the September 3-4 meeting, preceded by talks on September 2 by senior officials, to try to make progress on some of the thorniest issues in the talks, launched in late 2001 by World Trade Organization (WTO) members to boost the world economy and help poor countries grow through trade. The Pittsburgh summit is likely to see a Doha deal as part of the cure for the global economic crisis as well as a bulwark against protectionism.

August 31, 2009  China.  The Chinese government has revised its tariffs on imported auto parts after losing its appeal against a World Trade Organization ruling. As a result, beginning Sept. 1 China will reduce its auto part duties to 10 percent, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has stated. In April 2005, China introduced a 25 percent import tariff on auto parts used in the assembly of vehicles in China. The United States and European Union quickly filed complaints with the WTO against China. If China had failed to comply with the WTO ruling, it could have been subject to economic sanctions. Effective Sept. 1, all imported auto parts will be taxed at the same low rate regardless of the percentage of foreign-made parts used to make a vehicle, according to China's National Development and Reform Commission. China had argued that its high tariffs on auto parts imports were needed in order to prevent automakers in China from evading vehicle import duties by importing cars in large chunks of components. The U.S., Canada, and the European Union argued in response that China's high tariffs on auto parts imports actually encouraged global auto parts manufacturers to shift their production to China in order to avoid those tariffs. The U.S., Canada and the E.U. were suffering job losses as a result, they argued.

August 28, 2009  Russia.  Russia threw its 16-year bid to join the World Trade Organization into jeopardy Tuesday when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Moscow would only join the trade body in partnership with two former Soviet republics. Putin, announcing plans to form a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, blamed tortuous WTO accession talks for blocking integration with its ex-Soviet neighbors, only days after the European Union said the Kremlin's wait could be over this year. The surprise move by Russia, the largest country outside the 153-member WTO, implies talks will start afresh on the basis of a new agreement between the three former Soviet states, which intend to form the customs union from Jan. 1, 2010. Russia has previously accused the United States and the European Union of hindering its WTO bid for political reasons.

August 27, 2009  China.  China has become the world's largest exporter surpassing Germany, the World Trade Organization states. China surpassed Germany, which has held the No.1 slot since 2003, by a slim margin of $10 million after exporting goods worth $521.7 billion in the first half of 2009. The latest figures have put China and Germany in a desperate race to establish themselves firmly in the top slot in 2009 end and in 2010. Independent experts including a WTO economist have said it is still too early to say China would remain ahead of Germany by the end of this year. Chinese exports to all its 12 major trading partner-countries have risen rapidly in the past two years. China’s share in the trade of these 12 countries including the US and European nation climbed from 16.2% during the first quarter to 19.3% in early 2008.  The WTO had predicted last July that China would pass Germany as the largest exporter in 2009. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development states that the ratio of China's foreign trade to global trade will increase from the current 8.7% to 10% when the global economy recovers.

August 26, 2009  WTO.  The World Trade Organization is expected to deliver a mixed ruling next week in the U.S. case against EU launch aid for Airbus allowing both sides to claim victory, sources with knowledge of the case stated yesterday. The preliminary ruling is expected to be followed in the next six months by a WTO decision in a countersuit brought by the European Union over U.S. support for Boeing airliners. Brussels and Washington have been embroiled in a bitter multi-billion-dollar trans-Atlantic dispute over subsidies given to the world's top two plane makers hit by the worst economic crisis in nearly 80 years. "The WTO report will be handed over to EU and U.S. diplomats in Geneva on Friday, September 4," a source claims. "The ruling will be handed over to officials from Brussels and Washington at around 5:00 p.m. BST, but will not be made public." In the first half of this year Airbus sold 90 planes, and received 22 cancellations. But that still leaves the European manufacturer far ahead of U.S. rival Boeing, whose 85 new orders in the first half stand against 84 cancellations caused by a slump in demand from airline companies rocked by a huge fall in demand for flights.

August 25, 2009  India. India calls for early conclusion of World Trade Organization (WTO) trade talks as its essential to restore the confidence in the global economy and markets in view of the financial crisis.  The Doha Round of talks, launched in 2001, has missed several deadlines mainly because of strong divergent positions. ``The timely conclusion of the talks is important also to guard against emerging protectionist tendencies and to protect the livelihoods of the poor and marginalized``, said S M Krishna, external affairs minister. To end the deadlock, India has convened a mini-ministerial meeting in New Delhi next week in which trade ministers from over 75 countries will participate.  India has spearheaded different groupings like G-20, G-33 and Non-Agriculture Market Access (NAMA) -11 of developing countries.

August 24, 2009  U.S. manufacturers support WTO zeroing decision.   The Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition (CITAC) called on the Obama Administration and Congress Thursday to comply immediately with World Trade Organization decisions condemning the use of "zeroing" in anti-dumping proceedings. The World Trade Organization's Appellate Body on Friday reaffirmed that the process violates the international trade obligations of the United States. Zeroing eliminates negative dumping margins from dumping calculations. It allows officials to disregard instances in which foreign firms charge prices over fair value, thus offsetting supposed instances of undercharging.  U.S. failure to comply with the WTO ruling will leave U.S. exports subject to millions of dollars of retaliatory tariffs, CITAC said in a statement.  "Downstream U.S. industries are particularly hard hit by the loss of competitiveness that accompanies excessive duties on key inputs. This decision is actually in the interest of the vast majority of U.S. manufacturers, who ultimately pay for these duties through higher prices and reduced availability of production inputs in the United States. It is high time for the U.S. Administration to comply with the clear rulings of the WTO and heed the interests of U.S. industries. Failure to act now will undermine our ability to persuade our trading partners to comply with their own trade obligations."

August 24, 2009  Airbus vs. Boeing.   The World Trade Organization is poised to issue its first formal ruling in the Airbus versus Boeing dispute over aircraft development subsidies, but that has not stopped the U.K. from releasing launch aid for the A350XWB, Airbus’s newest development project. The U.K. is extending £340 million ($560.7 million) in loans to the European aircraft manufacturer to support development of the twin-widebody, on top of £60 million being allocated to GKN, a risk-sharing partner on the project. Other core Airbus countries are vowing to follow: France, the largest workshare beneficiary, is offering €1.4 billion ($1.9 billion); Germany, €1.1 billion; and Spain pledges aid, though no amount is set. The U.K. portion is far below what industry initially hoped to secure, although it is roughly in line with the expectations of recent months. Ian Gooden, CEO of the Society of British Aerospace Companies, applauded the government’s decision and noted that the A350XWB “is an extremely important program for the future of the U.K. aerospace industry, and this investment secures vital work across the sector. More than 5,000 jobs are created or supported across the U.K. supply chain” by the endeavor. Airbus initially worked to avoid a trade fight. But efforts to broker a deal have been stalled for some time, and with A350 development expenditures beginning in earnest—tooling is being ordered and construction of the final assembly hall has also started—securing the money has become an increasing priority.

The WTO’s decision will basically unfold in two phases. Within the next two weeks, the trade body is expected to issue an interim report—the final version rarely varies—on the U.S. complaint regarding the alleged subsidies to Airbus; the panel hearing the European Union counter-challenge is only now wrapping up its work and a verdict is not expected until year-end. How the A350 would fare if the WTO sides with the U.S. in the pending ruling remains unclear, although industry officials suggest it could lead to Airbus being ordered to repay some of the government loans or to renegotiate them to market rates. Such a ruling—which would likely be appealed by the European Union—is expected to affect the most recent Airbus development programs, such as the A340-500/-600, A380 and now the A350. The European case against the U.S. focuses largely on tax rebates secured by Boeing for the 787, as well as on funding to the U.S. contractor for its NASA and Pentagon-related activities.

August 21, 2009  Brazil.  Brazil says it is moving forward with a World Trade Organization complaint against the United States over frozen orange juice. Brazil's foreign ministry is challenging the U.S. system for determining whether imports from South America's largest nation are being "dumped" at unfairly low prices. The ministry says the U.S. applies calculations that artificially inflate dumping margins. In a statement Wednesday, the ministry says Brazil's complaint will likely be heard by the WTO in a meeting Aug. 31. Brazil is the world's largest exporter of frozen orange juice. It sold nearly 1.3 million tons in 2008, mainly to the European Union and the United States. 

August 20, 2009  WTO.  Brazil will file a complaint against the U.S. at the World Trade Organization over its anti-dumping methodology on orange juice shipments. Brazil disputes the use of a methodology known as “zeroing,” whereby countries can inflate anti-dumping duties, the ministry said. The method considers the difference between the price of a product in its home country and in the U.S., except when the product is sold at a higher price in the U.S.  The complaint is Brazil’s first at the WTO against the U.S. since President Barack Obama took office in January. Brazil will request a panel of the WTO’s dispute settlement panel on Aug. 31, the ministry said. Brazil expects the probe to start by Sept. 25, according to the statement today.  “Brazil’s decision to request the panel reflects the perception that zeroing, besides bring incompatible with multilateral trade rules, causes great uncertainties and serious damage to exporters,” the statement said.  China overtook the U.S. as Brazil’s largest trading partner this year, as exports to the world’s largest economy shrank amid the global financial crisis and Chinese imports from Brazil rose.

August 19, 2009  WTO.  A World Trade Organization panel has rejected a U.S. appeal in a case that struck down how it calculated import duties, handing a victory to Japan. The U.S. “has failed to comply with the recommendations and rulings” of WTO judges in April in a case filed by Japan against the so-called zeroing calculation, which inflates import duties, appellate judges said in a 103-page report released on the Geneva-based trade arbiter’s Web site. The U.S. announced in December 2006 that it would eliminate zeroing.  Yesterday’s ruling clears the way for Japan to continue its effort to take retaliatory measures against the U.S. for not complying with the initial ruling. Last year, Japan asked WTO judges to permit sanctions of up to $250 million in the first year. That request was put on hold while the WTO examined whether the U.S. had complied with the original ruling.  Zeroing considers the difference between the price of a product in its home country and in the U.S., except when the item is sold at a higher price in the U.S. The result is higher anti-dumping duties on products such as steel, paper and textiles. Such duties aim to protect domestic manufacturers from competition from goods sold more cheaply in their country than in the country of origin. In a series of WTO cases, judges have sided with Canada, Thailand, the European Union and India in their complaints against zeroing. The U.S. is the only WTO member to support the calculation.  Once the WTO adopts the Appellate Body report as well as the April ruling, the arbitration process on the amount of sanctions Japan can impose will continue. 

August 18, 2009  WTO and China.  China is to appeal against a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling that calls for it to end restrictions on the import of US film and music products. Its move comes a week after the WTO said China's policy of allowing the goods to be imported only by state-run firms broke global trade rules. The WTO wants private Chinese firms to be able to import US DVDs, CDs, computer games, books, magazines and films, making it easier for US entertainment companies to access the Chinese marketplace.  It also ruled that US music download firms should be able to offer their services direct to Chinese consumers. However, the WTO said China could continue to block the import of any foreign products it found objectionable. China's current limitations on US entertainment imports have created a large domestic counterfeit industry, much to US annoyance. The case is just the latest in a series of trade disputes between China and the US. While Washington has long accused China of trade protectionism, the US is also unhappy at the high volume of Chinese exports to America, accusing Beijing of deliberately keeping the yuan undervalued to make its exports artificially cheap.  The US trade deficit with China totaled $103bn (£63bn) in the first half of 2009, down 13% from the same period last year.

August 17, 2009  WTO.  A successful Doha round trade deal could boost the global economy by $300-700 billion a year, a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics said. The figures that the Washington-based institute calculates are similar in size to stimulus packages deployed by the biggest countries to tackle the economic crisis, and underline how much is at stake in the long-running talks. The economists estimated the boost to global exports from concluding the Doha Round could range between $180 billion and $520 billion annually, depending on how far-reaching an eventual deal turns out to be. "The potential GDP gains are significant, between $300 billion and $700 billion annually, and well balanced between developed and developing countries," they stated. World leaders have called for the round, launched in the Qatari capital in 2001 to help poor countries prosper through trade, to conclude next year.

August 14, 2009  China.  The World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled that the extensive regulation of media and entertainment by the Chinese government, which have been mainly utilized to filter distribution of U.S.-produced media, is an illegal practice that violates the principle of free trade. When the People's Republic of China joined the WTO in 2001, matters such as these between Chinese and other nations' corporations and agencies had an outlet for arbitration. The WTO allows censorship of content, which is at the core of China's protectionist distribution policy in hopes to continue controlling the content that reaches its people. The Chinese government has said that it will appeal parts of the WTO ruling, though Beijing has also appealed to the WTO for help in forcing countries to end unilateral boycotts of Chinese goods from their own markets. If the WTO dispute panel rejects Beijing's protests and the Chinese government follows the terms of the ruling, China's integration into the global economy will continue, and other major powers' protectionist schemes, including the U.S. Obama administration's "Buy American" stimulus policy, may also face WTO review and dismissal.

August 13, 2009  U.S. trade deficit.  The U.S. trade deficit edged up slightly in June as imports rose for the first time in 11 months, another sign that the recession is beginning to loosen its grip on the economy. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the deficit rose 4 percent to $27 billion, from May's $26 billion. The May imbalance had been the lowest deficit in nearly a decade. While the politically sensitive deficit with China widened in June, the imbalance so far this year is running below last year's record pace. More good news for American exporters came as the U.S. defeated China in a major case before the World Trade Organization which could provide significant market opportunities for U.S. producers of everything from CDs and DVDs to music downloads and books. The bigger June deficit reflected an increase in imports for the first time in nearly a year, an indication that demand in the U.S. is starting to revive. In a good sign for American producers, exports rose for the second straight month.  Imports of goods and services climbed 2.3 percent to $152.8 billion. A 23.8 percent jump in petroleum to $21.5 billion led the increase. That was the largest amount this year, reflecting higher volume and rising oil prices. Imports of other products also rose, led by autos, computers and civilian aircraft. Exports rose 2 percent to $125.8 billion, good news for America's manufacturing sector, which has seen demand slump domestically and in key foreign markets as the recession that began in the U.S. in December 2007 spread worldwide.

August 12, 2009  Canada and Panama.  Canada has signed a free trade deal with Panama and said it wanted to conclude more such agreements, given that talks to open up the global trading system were going nowhere. Canadian Minister Stephen Harper signed the agreement with Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli during an official visit to the Latin American country. Harper said the Panama deal was Canada's eighth such agreement since he took office in early 2006. Last year, talks on the Doha round of trade liberalization at the World Trade Organization collapsed. Trade between Canada and Panama was only C$149 million ($135 million) in 2008. The deal will eliminate tariffs on most agriculture goods and machinery exported to Panama.

August 11, 2009  Meeting in Mexico.  Talks continued today in Guadalajara, Mexico in what has been dubbed the summit of the three amigos. The leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico are meeting to discuss economic issues, the drug trade and border security.
U.S. President Obama arrived on Sunday. Today Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived to join the talks with Mexico’s Felipe Calderon.  All three countries are partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the largest free-trade zone in the world. At the top of the agenda is how to power their economies through the lingering downturn and keep trade flowing smoothly.  The meeting has also attracted protesters. Around 200 of them marched on Guadalajara’s cathedral on Sunday. They had several grievances including the dominance of the U.S. and Canada in the free trade zone to the detriment of Mexico’s farmers, human rights violations and the rights of illegal migrant workers in the U.S. There is also a dispute between the US and Mexico over border bans on Mexican trucks – the United States will not allow them to drive in the United States because they are unsafe.

August 10, 2009  WTO.  The World Trade Organization released its World Trade Report 2009 recently in Singapore. The WTR examines a dilemma that governments face at the time of economic crisis. At one level most governments come under pressure — usually but not exclusively from the domestic political constituency — to adopt measures that may restrict trade. If such pressures are not addressed adequately, they can lead to ‘a dangerous escalation’, with other countries embarking on tit-for-tat policies. Contingency measures that have already been agreed upon under the multilateral trade rules can act as a ‘safety valve.’ These include safeguards, anti-dumping measures and increase in tariffs up to limits prescribed by the WTO.

It is perhaps inevitable that protectionism will rear its head in these times of a global financial and economic crisis. There might be a slight improvement in the global economic outlook but the developed economies are forecast to contract during 2009. Both the IMF and the World Bank expect only China, India and a few other developing countries to post positive growth rates. The global institutions have said that recovery, when it takes place, will be weak at least initially. The developed countries — notably the U.S., the U.K., the EU and Japan — have the largest markets for goods and services. The big challenge for the WTO is to ensure that channels of trade remain open in the face of economic adversity. Well-balanced contingency measures, designed primarily to deal with a variety of unanticipated market situations are necessary to avoid ‘high intensity’ protectionism and to ensure the effectiveness and stability of trade agreements.

August 7, 2009  Ukraine.  The expiration of the temporary 13% extra charge on the import duty that applies to refrigerators and cars on September 7, 2009, will eliminate all controversial issues between Ukraine and the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ukraine's Economy Minister has stated. The economy minister warned however, against passing new laws extending the temporary 13% extra charge or introducing new restrictions on import. The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers has decided to cancel a 13% extra duty on the import of a number of goods, apart from on cars and refrigerators.  The Constitutional Court has argued that the Cabinet of Ministers use of such powers is unconstitutional and not authorized. International financial organizations criticized the decision to limit imports, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) demanded that it be cancelled. The effect of the 13% extra import duty expires on September 7 and the government has expressed hope that this would assist Ukraine avoid sanctions from the WTO and its member states.

August 6, 2009  Africa.  African countries will be using the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) forum in Nairobi to push for a comprehensive revision of key provisions of U.S. legislation to remove hidden barriers to trade.  The delegates attending the forum which entered its second day on Wednesday said AGOA should be amended to make it a permanent trade program if it is to achieve the intended purpose of strengthening trade between Sub-Saharan Africa and Washington. African Union deputy chairperson Erastus Mwencha said stringent quality and lengthy certification processes had prevented many African producers from exporting to the U.S. under what has been described as the most lucrative trade preference legislation ever passed by the American Congress.  Mwencha, who is the immediate former Secretary General of COMESA, told participants from 40 African countries that the Act should be investment-friendly and predictable to encourage investors to take advantage of the opportunities it presents.

August 6, 2009  India.  India plans to sue the European Union at the World Trade Organization for allowing big pharmaceutical companies to use the bloc's tough patent laws to detain generic drugs in transit to developing countries, according to India's commerce secretary. On over 20 occasions since late last year, border inspectors in the Netherlands and Germany have held up Indian medicines used to treat AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, heart conditions and other ailments, saying they violated patent laws in the EU, although the drugs weren't intended for sale there, say EU customs officials and lawyers for pharmaceutical companies.

August 5, 2009  China.  China appears to be adapting to global trade rules, as exemplified in its recent complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on an anti-dumping dispute with the European Union (EU), a Brussels-based trade expert has stated.  "In the past, China has taken quite a low profile in the international organizations like the WTO. Certainly China is becoming more adapted to the international trading system," Duncan Freeman, a researcher at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies, states. The Chinese government filed a complaint on Friday to the WTO on anti-dumping measures taken by the EU against the import of Chinese iron or steel fasteners, marking the first time that Beijing resorted to the international trade regulator on a trade dispute with the EU, its largest trading partner. Before that, China had only taken four similar actions at the WTO since the country joined the world trade body in 2001, all of which had been targeted at the United States.

August 4, 2009  Doha.  U.S. business groups frustrated with the slow pace of nearly 8-year-old world trade talks urged the Obama administration yesterday to remove negotiations on environmental goods and services from the Doha round and pursue them separately. The National Foreign Trade Council and eight other business groups wrote to President Barack Obama to urge him "to use all possible channels" to pursue an agreement on reducing barriers to trade in environmental goods and services, even if that means going outside the Doha round. The organizations hope developed and developing country leaders will back the idea at the Group of 20 leaders meeting in Pittsburgh in late September. A spokesman for the U.S. Trade Representative's office said the United States was "fully committed to obtaining agreement in the WTO (World Trade Organization) to eliminate trade barriers to environmental goods and services," but would continue working in other forums to advance the initiative.

August 3, 2009  U.S. and China.  The World Trade Organization decided on Friday to rule on China's complaint over US restrictions on Chinese poultry exports, after Beijing accused Washington of "naked discriminative protectionism". The WTO's members automatically set up a panel to examine the complaint at a meeting of its Disputes Settlement Body here, a trade source said, 11 days after China first requested its global trade watchdog to intervene. "The panel was established," the source said. Beijing says Washington is breaching international trade rules through several measures including an appropriations bill which it says result in a complete ban on imports of Chinese poultry. "These unilateral measures fundamentally violate relevant WTO rules, significantly impede the ordinary Sino-US trade in poultry products, and substantially impair the rights and benefits that Chinese enterprises deserve to enjoy," China said in a statement released by its mission to the WTO. "These measures are naked discriminative protectionism measures, which are strongly opposed by the Chinese government and enterprises," it added. China and the United States halted imports of each other's poultry in 2004 over fears about the spread of bird flu.

August 3, 2009  EU and China.  China has filed a complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on anti-dumping measures taken by the European Union (EU) against the import of Chinese iron or steel fasteners. Under the WTO's dispute settlement procedure, the two sides will now have some 60 days to try to resolve the dispute through consultations. If the consultations fail, China can ask for a WTO expert panel to investigate and rule on the legality of the EU measures. The EU measures "failed to comply with the relevant WTO rules in the process starting from initiation, investigation and to the final determination," the Chinese mission to the WTO said in a statement. The determinations are neither impartial nor transparent, which infringes the legitimate commercial interests of over 1,700 Chinese fastener producers, the statement said.

July 31, 2009  U.S. and China.  Recognizing China’s growing market economy, the US has agreed to loosen restrictions on the export of hi-tech goods to China, Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Qishan has disclosed. The decision came on Tuesday after a meeting between US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Qishan during the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington. Last year - in spite of a seven-year low in China’s rate of growth because of the global financial crisis - the volume of trade between the countries amounted to 333.7 billion dollar. However, despite the massive volume of trade, the US suffers from a significant trade deficit with China and has blamed China’s “undervalued” yuan for the fact that more goods flow from China into the US than in the other direction. Analysts have said the reluctance of the US to export hi-tech products is partly to blame and noted that unrestricted sales of hi-tech goods would help balance bilateral trade. The US also recognized the “continued progress” China has made in its pursuit of market reforms and will “earnestly” consider its concerns, and work toward its market economy status being acknowledged in an “expeditious” way.

July 30, 2009   EU and Philippines.  The European Union filed a trade complaint against the Philippines on Wednesday over taxes the southeast Asian country charges on imports of distilled spirits such as Scotch whisky and Spanish brandy. The EU's complaint to the World Trade Organization alleges that the Philippine's taxes are 10 to 50 times higher than for domestic liquors, making them "discriminatory and therefore in breach of international trade rules. The complaint starts a 60-day consultation period, after which the 27-nation bloc can ask the WTO to establish an investigative panel. WTO cases can result in retaliatory trade sanctions, but generally only after years of litigation.

This long-running problem has prevented EU exporters from competing fairly in the Philippine market, and has led to a sharp decrease in imports of European spirits,EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton said in a statement. The Philippines' chief WTO envoy said his country was reviewing its tax law and welcomed dialogue with Brussels. But he added that the tax differences needed to be understood as an attempt to help indigenous communities in the Philippines that are producing alcohol from simple ingredients such as coconut and sugarcane. Imported spirits are definitely in a different price range than the spirits they are complaining about," Ambassador Manuel Teehankee stated. "The law provides for certain assistance for indigenous communities using low-cost products. European liquor makers have long complained about the taxes, according to the EU, which said it has raised the issue repeatedly with the Philippines in recent years. Brussels said the higher taxes have prevented European exporters from fully participating in the country's growing market for alcoholic beverages. While overall spirits sales have risen 8 percent in the country since 2005, sales of foreign-made liquors have declined, the EU contended. It said EU exports of spirits to the Philippines fell to around euro18 million in 2007, from euro37 million in 2004.

July 29, 2009  U.S. and China.   The United States and China will discuss new ways to support free trade to restore growth to the ailing global economy in high-level talks yesterday. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the two sides at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue would explore further measures to open up trade and curb protectionism. Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan said the two sides would work together to obtain "an early success" in the Doha Round international trade talks. "We call on China and the United States to refrain from taking any protectionist measures," Wang said before the economic track session convened behind closed doors. The United States a month ago complained to the World Trade Organization about Beijing's restrictions on exports of certain raw materials. Last week China upped the ante in a dispute with Washington over poultry exports, calling on WTO to rule on its complaint against US "discriminatory" legislation.

July 28, 2009  Canada.  Canadian Conservative ministers lashed out yesterday at animal rights groups and pandering European politicians as they announced an appeal of a sweeping ban on seal imports. Trade Minister Stockwell Day said the government believes Monday’s decision by the Council of the European Union to bar seal products from commercial hunts violates World Trade Organization guidelines. Canada will file an appeal this week. The government had lobbied the EU extensively but Day said European MPs had succumbed to the emotion of voters just before a general election. Noting the WTO appeal could take months or possibly years, he didn’t rule out compensation for hunters who have lost income.  The European Commission responded to Canada’s announcement by saying it will vigorously defend any challenge at the WTO. The legislation is non-discriminatory and designed to give voice to a “genuinely held concern of EU citizens,” said spokesman Lutz Guellner.

July 27, 2009  WTO.  Legal "safety valves," allowing countries to suspend or waive trade commitments, can damage the global economy if abused for protectionist purposes, the World Trade Organization has stated. In its annual World Trade Report, the WTO examined the use of "contingency measures," a topic it said was particularly timely given fears of protectionism in the global crisis. The global trade watchdog has been monitoring restrictive measures taken by countries - both those that violate trade agreements and those that are allowed under existing deals. In the latest assessment, issued this month, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said governments were unfairly blocking trade in response to the downturn.

An analysis of the measures concluded that their design should aim to limit circumstances in which they can be used for protectionism and that their design should not undermine trade agreements. The WTO noted it was easier to track the contingency measures analyzed in the report than to identify trade-restrictive measures or subsidies embedded in financial rescue and fiscal stimulus packages favored by rich nations and some emerging ones such as China and Brazil.

July 24, 2009  UK and Brazil.  Brazil is to lodge a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization over an alleged illegal shipment of UK toxic waste, its government has said. The British Environment Agency wants the 1,400 tons of waste from 99 containers returned for inspection, in order to defend or qualify the accusations. Brazil claims at least two containers held waste like syringes and condoms - possibly breaching waste movement codes. Its complaint will be based on the Basel Convention, which bans shipments of toxic waste from industrialized nations, Brazil's foreign ministry said in a statement. It wants the origin of the containers traced and to find out how they ended up in three Brazilian ports - Santos, near Sao Paulo, and two others in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.  Waste can be sent abroad for recycling, but it is illegal to export it for disposal. The maximum penalty for illegally exporting waste is an unlimited fine or two years in prison.

July 23, 2009  WTO.  World merchandise exports increased by 15 percent in nominal terms to 15.8 trillion U.S. dollars in 2008, while exports of commercial services rose 11 percent to 3.7 trillion dollars, a report released by the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Wednesday announced. The share of developing economies in world merchandise trade set new records in 2008, with exports rising to 38 percent of the world total and imports increasing to 34 percent, the 2009 World Trade Report said.  Germany remained the leading merchandise exporter in 2008, with shipments worth 1.47 trillion dollars, despite the fact that its share in world exports fell to 9.1 percent from 9.5 percent in 2007. China was the second largest, with exports of 1.43 trillion dollars and an 8.9 percent share.  Next was the United States (1.3 trillion dollars or 8.1 percent), Japan (782 billion dollars or 4.9 percent) and the Netherlands (634 billion dollars or 3.9 percent). The United States continued to lead all merchandise importers with shipments from the rest of the world worth 2.17 trillion dollars (13.2 percent). Germany was the second-largest with a 7.3 percent share valued at 1.21 trillion dollars. The other top importers were China (1.13 trillion dollars or 6.9 percent), Japan (762 billion dollars or 4.6 percent), and France (708 billion dollars or 4.3 percent).

July 22, 2009  WTO agricultural talks.  Trade negotiators started a week of technical talks on agriculture at the World Trade Organization in Geneva this week, setting the stage for accelerated negotiations in September. Heads of major government agreed earlier this month that the WTO talks should be wrapped up in 2010, leaving governments precious little time to complete the details of almost a decade of work. This week's talks are designed to help governments prepare the data for the schedules of concessions each will need to deliver after 'modalities' are agreed. Modalities are the formula governments are supposed to use to cut import tariffs and farm subsidies. The schedules of concessions are the actual cuts in subsidies and tariffs for each product which each government agrees to make. One trade source in Geneva explained: "The best way to describe the exercise is to identify what type of data is needed for scheduling, but not the actual data itself. In other words, when members agree ‘modalities’ at the same time they will need to have a view on what data they [are] going to need in order to write their schedules of commitments afterwards."

July 22, 2009  APEC.  Asia-Pacific trade ministers meeting in Singapore agreed Tuesday to step up efforts to conclude a new global trade pact in 2010 after leaders of key economies agreed on the deadline. Discussion on ways to conclude the often-stalled Doha round of world trade talks dominated the opening day of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting. Officials said the two-day meeting was the largest gathering of trade ministers so far in 2009 and followed a new consensus among key players to wrap up the Doha round of world trade talks next year. The meeting in Singapore comes two weeks after a Group of Eight (G8) summit in L'Aquila, Italy where leaders of the world's most powerful nations and emerging economies agreed to wrap up the Doha talks by 2010.

Members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group agreed on Tuesday to stop protectionist measures, in an effort to enhance global trade. "They all agreed that even if the measures are WTO-consistent, if they have serious protectionist impact on trade and investment they will refrain from taking those measures as much as possible," stated an official, who is attending the two-day trade discussions being held in Singapore.

July 21, 2009  China and poultry.  China yesterday upped the ante in a dispute with Washington over poultry exports, calling on the World Trade Organization to rule on its complaint against US "discriminatory" legislation. According to Beijing, Washington is breaching international trade rules through a US spending bill that it says contains a clause banning imports of Chinese poultry. "While violating various WTO rules, the measure has severely undermined the stable development of Sino-US trade (in) poultry products and damaged the lawful rights and interests of China's poultry industry," a Chinese official said at a WTO dispute settlement body meeting. "This constitutes a typical discriminatory protectionism measure in international trade," the official added. A member of the US delegation said that its position reflected "an objective, science-based consideration" of relevant evidence permitted under WTO rules. There was "no basis" to Beijing's complaint, the US official said. China and the United States halted imports of each other's poultry in 2004 over fears about the spread of bird flu. Imports of some US poultry products to China have since resumed but Chinese officials have complained that the United States continues to hold up reciprocal imports of Chinese poultry.

July 20, 2009  Ecuador and bananas.  Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa stated Saturday, July 18 that Ecuador won’t keep negotiating a commercial agreement with the European Union until the trade bloc complies with World Trade orders to cut duties on Ecuadorean bananas. Correa states that the EU has ignored nine WTO rulings favoring Ecuador, the world’s biggest banana exporter. The rulings, he said, order the EU to cut a duty of 176 euros ($248.20) it charges to import a ton of bananas from Ecuador.  And finally on Sunday, Ecuador called off banana trade talks with the European Union that also included Colombia and Peru, saying World Trade Organization (WTO) rulings in Quito's favor were not being respected. 

For 15 years, the WTO has found in Ecuador's favor in its complaints over what it says are unfair EU tariffs on its bananas. Ecuador is the world's biggest banana exporter and the EU is one of its top markets. Among EU members, France produces bananas in its Caribbean territories, Spain in its Canary Islands in the Atlantic and Portugal on the island of Madeira.

July 17, 2009  China.  The U.S. and the European Union have asked the World Trade Organization for help in reducing what they contend are illegal Chinese controls on exports of several "important" raw materials used to make steel, aluminum, chemicals. Some of the materials make semiconductors. The materials listed include such items as bauxite, coke, fluorspar, magnesium, manganese, silicon metal, silicon carbide, yellow phosphorus and zinc. In Washington, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk accuses China of pursuing a "troubling" industrial policy. "China's measures appear to be part of a troubling industrial policy aimed at providing substantial competitive advantages for the Chinese industries using these inputs," Kirk says. The EU Commission says in a statement that it considers China's export restrictions on a number of raw materials "in clear breach of international trade rules." EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton complains: "The Chinese restrictions on raw materials distort competition and increase global prices, making things even more difficult for our companies in this economic downturn."

The U.S. and the EU argue that the Chinese are limiting foreign access to the key raw materials, thus raising prices for them on world markets. China has defended its restrictions as being in line with WTO rules. European industries have raised concerns for a number of years on various export restrictions—quotas, export duties and minimum export prices—which China tends to apply on key raw materials. Beijing's policy appears to be aimed at creating "unfair preferences for Chinese industries" by making raw materials cheaper to them, thereby skewing costs right along the supply chain, according to Commissioner Ashton. She says European industries are dependent on imports of raw materials, and are therefore vulnerable to distortions in world commodities markets. "Currently there is no level playing field for European industry with their Chinese competitors," the commissioner adds. China has defended its moves to restrict exports of some raw materials, saying it was acting to protect the environment.

July 16, 2009  Canada and EU.  The European Union stated on Wednesday it and Canada had signed a settlement of a dispute Canada brought against the EU at the World Trade Organization in 2003 on the application of biotech products legislation. The agreed solution provides for regular dialogue on issues of mutual interest on agriculture biotechnology, the European Commission said in a statement. "The mutually agreed solution with Canada is a clear sign that this type of dialogue works. I hope we can follow the same constructive approach with Argentina and the United States," the EU Trade Commissioner said in the statement.

Meanwhile, within days of imposing anti-dumping duties on US biodiesel imports for up to five years, the European Union (EU) officials met in Washington DC with their US counterparts to discuss other bilateral trade relations. The list included US rice exports to the EU; a fallout from the US online gambling laws; a WTO dispute over rights to play Irish music in the US commercial establishments; and the trade implications of chemical regulations in the EU as well as the US.  The EU trade investigation found that US producers sold biodiesel to Europe far below the real costs of production and received federal tax credits and state subsidies. EU officials said this helped US exporters increase their share of the EU market for biodiesel from 0.4% in 2005 to more than 17% from April 2007 to March 2008. The two sides are set to meet again in September. “Our discussion also touched upon how better to cooperate in preventing disputes and on preparations for the fall meeting of the Transatlantic Economic Council,” the US-EU joint statement concluded.

July 15, 2009  WTO chief.  The global economic downturn is far from over, and few countries have dismantled the dangerous protectionist barriers they imposed in response to it, the World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy has stated. In remarks to the WTO's 153 members, Lamy said that import penalties and other border restrictions are closing off markets and causing more difficulty in a time of depressed demand. While saying there was no "outbreak of high-intensity protectionism" to date, Lamy raised the possibility of an amplification of trade disputes, retaliatory restrictions, and sanctions if unfair barriers are kept in place. The WTO is analyzing economic stimulus measures to prop up banks, insurers, carmakers and other key sectors in developed markets, where the credit crisis began. Lamy, who attended the G8 summit in Italy last week where world leaders promised to work to conclude a new global free trade pact in 2010, told WTO members that it is too early to count on an economic recovery.

July 14, 2009  Canada signs European Free Trade Agreement.  On July 2, 2009, Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, announced that, effective July 1, 2009, the free trade agreement (FTA) signed by Canada and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland entered into force. (News Release). Also entering into force at the same time as the FTA were three associated bilateral agreements on agriculture with Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, with the Canada-Switzerland bilateral agreement covering Liechtenstein. Canadian companies will benefit from improved market access to innovative technologies and other inputs from EFTA markets through the elimination of import duties on industrial goods, including machinery and scientific and precision instruments. Together, the EFTA countries were Canada’s seventh largest merchandise export destination in 2008. Canada exported $4.2 billion in merchandise to the EFTA countries in 2008, with two-way merchandise trade valued at $13.2 billion.

July 13, 2009  Canada and Korea.  Canada has called on the World Trade Organization to set up a dispute settlement panel to deal with Korea’s ban on its beef, the government here said yesterday. Seoul has banned Canadian beef imports since May 2003, after the country reported its first case of mad cow disease. Korea’s Agriculture Ministry said Ottawa formally requested the establishment of the panel on Thursday. The panel would be able to take action that could compel a country to change its policies or authorize punitive measures in the case of non-compliance.

“Seoul objects to taking the matter to a settlement panel and plans to make known its stance at the Dispute Settlement Board that will convene on July 20 to review the request,” said a agricultural ministry official, stressing that Korea maintains trade policies in import rules that are in accordance with international guidelines and standards. Seoul’s objections could hold up any decision to set up the trade panel this month, although under WTO rules the next board meeting planned for Aug. 31 can automatically take steps to acknowledge Canada’s request. Korea and Canada have been engaged in bilateral talks for several years to resolve the beef issue but have made little headway. Even if the panel is established, the process leading up to a ruling can take up to two years.  Ottawa, which received a “controlled risk” classification from the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, has been pushing Seoul to open the Korean market to its beef without restrictions. Korea countered that because Canada has reported 16 cases of mad cow disease so far, it could open its market but that there is a need to limit imports to protect public health.

July 13, 2009  Russia.  Russia's plans to join the World Trade Organization as a three-way customs union including Kazakhstan and Belarus could be "problematic," President Dmitry Medvedev states. Medvedev's comments, at the G8 summit in the Italian town of L'Aquila, were the latest indication that Moscow was backtracking on its earlier statements that Russia would seek to join WTO as part of a customs union with the other two ex-Soviet nations. Medvedev told a news conference that it made sense to coordinate with Belarus and Kazakhstan on common regulations, but that each country should join individually. Russia puzzled observers last month when it dropped its unilateral bid just days after Western officials signaled Russia was close to concluding its bilateral talks with the European Union and the United States, signaling a breakthrough in the 16-year negotiations. Analysts said a joint bid with Kazakhstan and Belarus could delay its accession by years.

July 10, 2009  G8 and trade.  Trade protectionist policies of some countries, especially in the times of global economic crisis, have been given a thumbs down by the joint declaration of the G8 and G5 summit. The joint declaration of the world's wealthiest and most industrialized countries (G8) and the emerging economies (G5) said: 'We will resist protectionism and open markets for trade and investment. We reject all protectionist measures in trade and investment.' The emerging economies and developing countries had been saying that they were worst hit by the economic crisis and protectionist policies would spell doom for their economies.  The declaration sought an ambitious and balanced conclusion to the Doha development round in 2010. It said that in order to fill remaining gaps in negotiations, ministers in-charge of trade had been instructed to explore all possible avenues of direct engagement within the World Trade Organization (WTO). The ministers have been asked to meet before the G20 Pittsburg summit in US in September this year.  The Doha talks on trade had broken down July last year following differences between India and the U.S.  Admitting that the global economic crisis had serious and alarming implications for growth and poverty eradication in developing countries, the declaration said that G8 and G5 countries were determined to engage responsibly with low-income countries, especially those in situations of fragility. 

July 9, 2009  Russia.  Commerce Secretary Gary Locke urged Russia on Wednesday to lift bans on poultry and pork imports from the United States as a "significant first step" toward persuading Congress to repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a long-standing irritant in U.S.-Russian relations. He also reported that Russia had expressed a desire to continue negotiations to join the World Trade Organization, despite Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's surprise decision last month to abandon the effort in favor of a new bid to enter as a regional bloc with Belarus and Kazakhstan.  Locke's remarks came after two days of talks with Russian officials during President Obama's trip to Moscow. He was the only Cabinet secretary to accompany Obama on the visit.  Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told state television Tuesday that Obama had promised to make a priority of repealing the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was originally designed to impose limits on trade with communist countries that restricted emigration but which remains a sore point between Washington and Moscow. "President Obama acknowledged that it is, in fact, now a problem on the American side," Lavrov said.  Locke, though, put it differently, saying that the president had told Russian leaders he could not repeal the law without Congress and that he needed their help to win over lawmakers.  

July 9, 2009  G8 and climate.  The world's leading industrial nations have tentatively agreed on a plan to prevent global temperatures from rising above a fixed level, after a more far-reaching proposal to slash production of greenhouse gases fizzled, according to U.S. and European negotiators.  White House and European officials meeting here for the Group of Eight summit said they would pledge to keep temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above average levels of more than a century ago, before large-scale industrial pollution occurred. Temperatures have already risen by nearly half that amount, leaving little wiggle room. It was unclear what mechanisms, if any, would be adopted to enforce the target.  Earlier, negotiators from 17 countries rejected a draft agreement to halve the global production of greenhouse gases by 2050. Under that plan, the United States, Japan and many European countries would have been required to cut gases even more, by 80 percent. Although European negotiators and many environmental advocates favored that proposal, it failed to win approval from China and India, whose leaders have argued that they could still end up bearing an unfair proportion of the burden. The White House said it supports the goal of slashing greenhouse gases in half by 2050, including the required 80 percent cuts for industrialized nations such as the United States. Administration officials told reporters that the Group of Eight would probably endorse the plan on a nonbinding basis.

July 9, 2009  WTO and APEC.  WORLD Trade Organization (WTO) director general Pascal Lamy will meet with trade ministers and senior officials of the member-countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) in Singapore next week to seek support for the reconvening of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The Doha Round talks collapsed in 2006, with many blaming the developed countries’ failure to make specific agricultural concessions to developing nations, although some observers said the real cause was the growing rejection of the WTO’s corporate-led globalization model due to its ill effects on the lives of people of poor countries. The Apec senior officials meeting (SOM) from July 15 to 19 and the Apec meeting of the Ministers Responsible for Trade on July 21 and 22 will take place in Singapore, which is hosting this year’s Apec Leaders’ Summit on November.

July 8, 2009  G8 summit. The agenda for this year's meeting, places development and climate change at the top of the list of priorities. Yet there have been many other G8 summits devoted to diminishing poverty in the developing world, without anything much happening beyond the publication of a self-congratulatory final communiqué. The UK is one of the few G8 members that has actually increased its foreign aid budget, whereas other countries, notably the host nation, have failed to live up to previous promises to increase such spending because of budget cutbacks caused by the economic crisis. One thing that might help developing nations is the liberalization of world trade, something thwarted by the failure of the Doha round, which successive gatherings of international leaders have failed to resolve. Leaked drafts of the G8's conclusions suggest that there will be a commitment to complete Doha next year, which would be welcome were it actually to happen. Ambitious cuts in carbon emissions to counter global warming are also being discussed at a 17-nation forum of the major economies; yet it is dawning on some that the cost of pursuing this agenda may be too high in the middle of an economic slowdown, suggesting that little progress will be made.

There is nothing wrong with world leaders meeting to discuss matters of mutual interest; indeed, it is to be encouraged. But these summits are devalued when they promise much but deliver little. Angela Merkel and Kevin Rudd of Australia have recently questioned the G8's usefulness, favoring instead the bigger G20 gathering, which has less of the air of a cozy cartel of rich countries. In fact, other leading economies, including China and India, have been invited to Italy for a "G8+5" discussion, which suggests that they should have been at the top table from the beginning.

July 7, 2009  WTO and China.  After spending so long trying to get into the WTO - China now spends most of its time trying to get around the rules. Even in the face of a global recession or indeed perhaps because of the global recession the US and EU are fighting back over the Chinese restrictions on exports that are aimed at protecting the domestic steel industry. This is really a none issue and will not save global trade. China will dig in and the US and Europe will give up.

Despite the periodic sighting of green shoots elsewhere in the economy, the landscape of global trade remains resolutely bare. The World Bank said on June 22nd that world-trade volumes, reeling from a drastic collapse in global demand (see chart), will shrink by nearly 10% this year. That would be the sharpest fall since the Depression, and the first decline in trade since a small dip in 1982. Unsurprisingly, tempers are fraying as governments struggle to find ways to protect their own. The latest salvo was fired on June 23rd by the U.S. and the European Union, which complained to the World Trade Organization (WTO) about China’s restrictions on the exports of nine minerals, including bauxite, coke, magnesium and manganese. These are important raw materials for the steel industry, among others, and China restricts their exports on the grounds that they are exhaustible resources. But the U.S. and the EU argue that by hindering their export, China is unfairly favoring domestic industries.

The U.S. and the EU are not resorting to imposing fresh barriers of their own in this dispute; for that matter, China’s export restrictions are not new either. But trade experts warn that protectionism remains a serious worry. Of particular concern are the so-called “Buy China” requirements added to China’s stimulus package this month. These require recipients of money from China’s mammoth fiscal expansion to choose domestic suppliers “unless products or services cannot be obtained in reasonable commercial conditions in China”. This sounds like out-and-out protectionism. But the U.S., which included similar “Buy America” provisions in its own stimulus bill, may find it hard to raise a stink.

July 6, 2009  WTO and Yemen.  Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have welcomed Yemen in accession to joining the WTO during their meeting in Geneva. Minister of Industry and Trade Yahya al-Mutawakil has met with Chairman of the Accession Department in WTO and dicussed several issues on preparing for the team's next meeting and developments in the legislative aspects, in addition to reviewing what has been achieved in bilateral meeting between Yemen and a number of WTO's members. On the sidelines of the WTO'S meeting, al-Mutawakil also discussed ways to strengthen bilateral negotiations between Japan and Yemen with Japanese ambassador. Yemeni delegations have also held several bilateral meetings with Canada, Australia, South Korea and Honduras discussing ways of introducing and marketing local goods. 

July 3, 2009  U.S. celebrates Independence Day.

July 2, 2009  WTO.  The World Trade Organization has warned of rising protectionism amid the economic crisis as it sharply cut its forecast for trade volumes of developed and developing economies this year. Making its latest assessment of the global economic situation, the WTO on Wednesday also observed that the sharp contraction of the global economy registered in the first quarter this year "appears to be slowing down". However, citing risks including rising unemployment and oil prices, the organization lowered its forecast of global trade contraction to 10.0 per cent from its March forecast of a shrinkage of 9.0 per cent. Trading volumes of developed economies are now expected to shrink by 14.0 per cent instead of 10.0 per cent while those of developing economies would contract 7.0 per cent, rather than the earlier forecast 2.0-3.0 per cent. Amid the economic crisis, the WTO said in its report to member states that there has been a growing number of instances of protectionism.

July 1, 2009  China.  China has postponed today's deadline for personal-computer makers to include a state-backed anti- pornography software on new PCs after U.S. officials and business groups urged it to scrap the rule.  The government is delaying mandatory installation of the Green Dam Youth Escort software after PC makers demanded more time, the Beijing-based Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Business groups representing U.S. technology companies including Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and Microsoft Corp. told Premier Wen Jiabao last week that Green Dam may undermine computer security. The software, which the Chinese government said is designed to block pornographic sites, also limits access to political content, tightening censorship of the world’s biggest Web market by users, university researchers said.