May 21, 2012  G-8 Summit. Observing that robust international trade, investment and market integration are key drivers of strong sustainable and balanced growth, leaders of the G-8 nations on Saturday committed to refrain from protectionist measures and asked other countries of the world to do so. "We will honour our commitment to refrain from protectionist measures, protect investments and pursue bilateral, plurilateral, and multilateral efforts, consistent with and supportive of the WTO framework, to reduce barriers to trade and investment and maintain open markets. We call on the broader international community to do likewise," G-8 leaders said in a joint communique. The communique was issued at the conclusion of the talks of the G-8 leaders on economy.

G-8, as it is called is the exclusive group of top eight economic nations of the world powers. It is grouping of the leaders of the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Russia. At the invitation of US President Barack Obama the G-8 leaders have gathered at the scenic presidential retreat of Camp David. "Robust international trade, investment and market integration are key drivers of strong sustainable and balanced growth. We underscore the importance of open markets and a fair, strong, rules-based trading system," the joint statement said. Recognising that unnecessary differences and overly burdensome regulatory standards serve as significant barriers to trade, G-8 leaders said they support efforts towards regulatory coherence and better alignment of standards to further promote trade and growth.

"Given the importance of intellectual property rights (IPR) to stimulating job and economic growth, we affirm the significance of high standards for IPR protection and enforcement, including through international legal instruments and mutual assistance agreements, as well as through government procurement processes, private-sector voluntary codes of best practices, and enhanced customs cooperation, while promoting the free flow of information," the statement said.  "To protect public health and consumer safety, we also commit to exchange information on rogue Internet pharmacy sites in accordance with national law and share best practices on combating counterfeit medical products," it said. 

May 18, 2012  Montenegro and Samoa.  On April 29, the World Trade Organization (WTO) informed that Montenegro had become its 154th member and that Samoa would become its 155th member on May 10. Montenegro applied for WTO membership on December 10, 2004, and, at the end of March this year, it informed the WTO that it had accepted its membership package, which is the final step in the accession process. Samoa applied for WTO membership on April 15, 1998, and Samoa informed the WTO last month that it had accepted its membership package. Under WTO rules, a country becomes a member 30 days after national ratification.

May 17, 2012  WTO.  U.S. rules on tuna labeling are inconsistent with World Trade Organization rules, the WTO's Appellate Body said on Wednesday, in a judgment that largely backed Mexico's original complaint against "dolphin friendly" labeling in the United States. The Appellate Body found the U.S. labeling rules were not even handed and meant that competition on the U.S. market was "to the detriment of Mexican tuna products".

May 16, 2012  EU and Argentina.  The suit is not directly linked to Argentine President Cristina Fernandez's decision to seize control of its biggest oil company, YPF, a subsidiary of Spain's Repsol. But the move last month played a role in the EU decision, according to the source. ”The European Union has decided to file a complaint (with the WTO) which will mean, if the EU wins, very serious trade sanctions for Argentina,“ the source said. ”The EU decisions follow from all the non-fulfilments which Argentina has built up before the WTO. The Repsol problem has really just been the straw that broke the camel's back.” The complaint will be lodged with the WTO within the next few days, the source said. A spokesman for EU trade commissioner Karel de Gucht could not immediately be reached for comment. The issue prompted a war of words between Argentina and at least 14 of its trading partners in recent weeks. US Ambassador to the WTO Michael Punke led the criticism at a March 30 meeting of the WTO Goods Council, where he said Argentina had put a blanket restriction on trade by requiring import licenses on all imported goods from Feb 1 this year. Argentina's Secretary for International Economic Relations Cecilia Nahon has said the country was being made into an example to discourage developing countries from using legitimate economic policies. 

May 15, 2012  WTO.  The label on products Americans purchase that names the country in which they are made may soon be gone. The World Trade Organization and the European Union have moved one step closer to eliminating "country of origin" labeling. The WTO has signed a contract with the OECD to start issuing official statistics on international trade based on value added. It is part of the WTO's "Made in the World" initiative, which has been created to modernize global trade statistics and reduce public opposition to free trade. As companies have created global supply chains "attributing the full commercial value of imports to the last country of origin can skew bilateral trade balances, pervert the political debate on trade imbalances and may lead to wrong and counter-productive decisions," says the WTO.

The WTO's work on developing a new measuring system for trade flows "is now mature enough to move from academic research to official statistics and international policy making," says the WTO. The WTO and OECD have been working with the U.S. International Trade Commission and the World Bank in the United States, the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE) and the Japan External Trade Organization in Asia, and the recently created World Input-Output Database (WIOD) consortium in Europe to implement the new trade statistics. The effort "is by itself an example of today's globalization," says the WTO. The WTO's Made in the World initiative is part of a process of "re-engineering global governance," said WTO Deputy Director General Alejandro Jara at the April 16, 2012, event launching the opening of the World Input-Output Database. With the rise of global supply chains "it is misleading to rely solely on gross trade flows as a measure" of a country's competitive position.

May 14, 2012  India.  The US, EU, Japan and Turkey are pushing India for dismantling its 'undue' export subsidies to the textile industry, but New Delhi is keen on further talks to temper the phase-out and to ensure that the key export sector is not stripped of all support. "Yes, we indeed will have to take away some export subsidies given to textile industry in three years as the threshold level for qualifying for such sops has been breached. But, the country will be careful to ensure that it takes away only what necessarily has to be taken away," a senior commerce department official told ET. The subsidies and countervailing measures agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) allows countries with per capita income below $1,000 to give export subsidies as long as exports from a particular sector is lower than 3.25% of world trade. India's share in the global market for textiles is almost 4% and has been higher than the threshold level for five years. Since countries are given eight years to remove the subsidies, India has time till 2015 to do so. "The government needs to carefully negotiate what kind of subsidies need to go as the textile sector gets a number of subsidies that are not directly targeted at it, but is given to all industry in general," points out DK Nair, secretary general, Confederation of Indian Textile Industries. India's exports of textiles, including readymade garments, is said to be between $31 billion and $32 billion, as per estimates made by CITI. It accounts for around 14% of industrial production and more than 10% of the country's total exports. The sector employs around 35 million people and is the largest employer after agriculture.

May 11, 2012  CARICOM.  Rum producers in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are getting high-level support in their protest against subsidies that are giving foreign rum producers in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI) preferential access to the United States market. Following two high-level visits mounted by CARICOM delegations to Washington in March and April to plead the CARICOM rum producers’ case, reports are that the next step could be a case before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) if there is little success from the meeting with the US Trade Representative Ron Kirk on Capitol Hill this month. CARICOM countries that have been exporting well-known rums to the United States for decades are lobbying against heavy subsidies being given to British spirits producer Diageo in the USVI because its rum and spirits have preferential entry into the US as they are recognised by the mainland as regional products. The complaint is that authorities in the Virgin Islands have given Diageo generous tax and other incentives and helped the company to build a brand-new heavy-duty distillery that would produce and export Captain Morgan Rum to the United States much cheaper than many of the spirits made by the CARICOM bloc’s producers.

May 10, 2012 WTO.  The World Trade Organization appointed Chang Seung Wha, a professor in trade law at Seoul National University, to join its seven-member Appellate Body, South Korea’s Trade Ministry said in an e-mailed statement today. Chang, a graduate of Harvard Law School, will settle international trade disputes alongside representatives of the U.S., the E.U., China, India, Mexico and South Africa, the ministry said.

May 9, 2012  Russia.  Russia's new President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that he was against the proposal of delaying ratification of the agreement on Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). "We cannot delay that for a year or two," Putin said, adding " that would mean our refusal to join the organization." Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister Putin nominated, echoed his view, saying "I think the timeframe will be quite sufficient, because it's five years, and maybe even more, to enable us to get ready properly." Meanwhile, the new prime minister said Russia would be prepared to support the domestic economy even after the entry into the WTO. "We will always be able to take certain steps and make decisions for assisting our economy, our industries and agriculture, even after the entry into the WTO," he said, noting " The WTO is an important entity, but we have our interests too." In December 2011, the WTO decided to give a final approval for Russia's membership at a ministerial conference, ushering in the last major economy outside the trade club. The Russian parliament will have to ratify the deal till June 15.

May 8, 2012  China's rare earth materials.  The United States, Japan, and the European Union - the three key consumers of Chinese rare earth materials - formally complained to the World Trade Organisation in March about Beijing's restrictions on its rare earth exports. Several weeks later, China announced the establishment of a 150-plus member association to promote sustainable development within this sector. Some analysts wonder if this is part of a Chinese plan to circumvent international complaints by instituting an oligopolistic arrangement to control its rare earth exports. Others ask if this could be another step in an escalating dispute with China over the global supply of rare earth materials. The creation of an industry association should not come as a surprise. This development is consistent with China's ongoing efforts to consolidate its domestic rare earth industry, which has been riddled with environmental degradation and illegal mining. The traditional rare earth production process in China uses toxic acid for refining, and the presence of radioactive materials like thorium in rare earth mines poses dangers to miners. Essentially, increasing scrutiny and enforcement of environmental standards in rare earth production processes in the late 1980s drove costs too high for most mines outside of China to stay in business.

Although rare earths - a set of 17 elements in the periodic table and key ingredients in many high-tech products like smart phones, hybrid car batteries, and laser targeting systems on military applications - are not rare, China accounts for over 90% of global supply. As Chinese society has become more aware of the environmental consequences associated with its rapid economic development - and the rare earth sector being only one of the micro-universes therein - it has introduced a series of measures to address negative conditions in the industry. For example, the country instituted a rare earth production quota in 2001, then an export quota in the mid-2000s. The export quotas during the early years generally met global demand. However, China began tightening its export quota in the late 2000s, leading to steep price hikes for some rare earths in 2010.

May 7, 2012  India.   German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG has challenged a ground-breaking Indian ruling that allowed a local firm to produce a vastly cheaper copy of its patented drug for kidney and liver cancer. India's patents chief ruled in March the price Bayer charged for the drug, Nexavar, was "exorbitant" and ordered the firm to give a so-called "compulsory licence" to make the medicine to Indian company Natco Pharma. "We will rigorously continue to defend our intellectual property rights which are a prerequisite for bringing innovative medicines to patients," Bayer spokesman Aloke Pradhan told AFP in an emailed statement on Saturday. The patent controller's order "damages the international patent system and endangers pharmaceutical research", Pradhan said. It was not immediately known when the appeal, filed with the country's Intellectual Property Appellate Board on Friday, would be heard. Drug firms insist they need patent protection for medicines to recoup costs of long years of research and development. Under the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Agreement, which governs trade and intellectual property rules, compulsory licences are a legally recognised means to overcome barriers in accessing affordable medicines. The Indian ruling in March marked the first time a so-called "compulsory licence" for production of a patented drug had been granted in the country of 1.2 billion, known as a global generics drug powerhouse. India has long been a key provider of cheap generic medicines to the developing world as it did not issue drug patents until 2005, when it was obliged to adhere to WTO intellectual property regulations.

May 4, 2012  Tourism.  The U.N.'s World Trade Organization says 1 billion people will cross international borders as tourists this year for the first time. WTO Americas Regional Director Carlos Vogeler predicts the milestone will be reached in the fall. The iconic figure is about 4 percent higher than last year's. Back in 1950, the figure was 25 million. The UN counts only people who stay at least one night. It does not include cruise ship passengers. The top three destinations are France, the US and China. 

May 3, 2012  India.  The US and the EU have questioned India's special import levies to 'safeguard' domestic industry from import, saying they may have been calculated in a non-transparent manner.  India has said the safeguard duties were within the bounds of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. The US and the EU expressed concerns about the transparency and due process in India's safeguard investigations at a recent meeting of the WTO's safeguard committee.  Despite India's assurance that duties were in order, the US said it would be submitting specific concerns to New Delhi within a few days. The WTO allows member countries to impose safeguard duties, which are short-term import levies over and above the existing import duties, if there is evidence of a surge in import of a particular product. The affected country also has to prove that the surge in imports was causing injury to the domestic industry.  There were about 10 instances of safeguard duties imposed on imports by India between 1998 and 2004. The country did not impose any safeguard duties between 2004 and 2008 when it relied mainly on anti-dumping duties to check cheap imports. 

May 2, 2012  China and US. America’s economic imbalance with China has been a singular concern of policy makers for more than half a decade. Senators Charles E. Schumer and Lindsey Graham wanted to punish China for pegging the exchange rate to the dollar in 2005 — arguing that its policy of cheapening the currency to subsidize exports was fueling a huge trade surplus that cost America jobs. Their bill never passed. But reducing China’s surpluses has remained at the top of the bilateral agenda ever since.

Something unexpected has happened to China’s economy, however. Its surplus with the rest of the world has largely disappeared. China’s imbalance with the United States is still likely to take center stage when Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner sits down to the fourth round of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue this week. But he will have a harder time making the case that America’s trade deficit is somehow China’s fault. China’s current-account surplus — the broadest measure of its trade relations, which tracks how much more China exports in goods and services than it imports — has plummeted. In 2007 it amounted to more than 10 percent of the entire Chinese economy. By last year it had shrunk to about 2.8 percent. And the International Monetary Fund estimates it will decline to 2.3 percent of the nation’s output in 2012, the smallest since 2001. The United States’ current-account deficit has shrunk, too, to 3.1 percent from 5.1 of American gross domestic product.

April 20, 2012   G20 ministers meet.  Trade ministers from the Group of 20 leading and emerging economies met with business leaders on Mexico's Pacific coast Thursday to discuss measures to increase international commerce.  "Global Trade and investment were, over the past decade, critical to contributing to prosperity and peace," said Martin Senn, president of the Zurich Financial Services Group, at the start of the two-day meeting.  Business leaders from the so-called B20 group called on the G20 ministers to make investment in trade a permanent part of their agenda, to avoid measures harming trade and to strengthen the role of the World Trade Organization (WTO), as economies worldwide deal with the impact of Europe's debt crisis.  Nineteen trade and economy ministers, including from China, Turkey, Australia and South Korea, were taking part in the gathering of G20 nations and five invited countries in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta.  They were joined by the heads of the WTO and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Pascal Lamy and Jose Angel Gurria respectively.  The Mexico meeting comes ahead of a G20 summit in the Pacific resort of Los Cabos, northwest Mexico, in June.  

April 19, 2012   Colombia & Argentina.  Colombia has sent a letter to the World Trade Organization protesting Argentina's import restrictions on its products, the government announced Wednesday. Colombia is among several of Argentina's trading partners who have threatened legal action following efforts by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez's administration to curb imports and improve a deteriorating trade surplus. The move came amid controversy over Argentina's decision this week to expropriate YPF, the country's largest oil company, which is owned by the Spanish company Repsol. Colombia's trade minister, Sergio Diaz-Granados, said that Argentina was adopting requirements that would create obstacles for his country's exports. "We voiced our protest through our ambassador in Geneva 18 days ago, as other countries have done, signaling that Argentina's measures affect free trade and contravene the fundamental principles of the World Trade Organization," Diaz-Granados said. "What Colombia is asking for is reciprocity, just as Colombians buy Argentine goods, so too should Argentines buy Colombian goods," he said. Diaz-Granados added that the restrictions, which have been in place for several months, have particularly affected the furniture industry and chemical and paper products. 

April 18, 2012  World trade.  World trade expanded in 2011 by 5.0%, a sharp deceleration from the 2010 rebound of 13.8%, and growth will slow further still to 3.7% in 2012, the World Trade Organization (WTO) forecasted on April 12, 2012. The Organization attributed the slowdown to the global economy losing “momentum due to a number of shocks, including the European sovereign debt crisis.” The WTO made these known in its global trade statistics for the year 2011. “The further slowing of trade expected in 2012 shows that the downside risks remain high. We are not yet out of the woods,” WTO Director General Pascal Lamy said in a statement. 

Mr Lamy adds that “More than three years have passed since the trade collapse of 2008-09, but the world economy and trade remain fragile.”
According to the WTO, a significant braking of trade expansion had been forecast for 2011, but multiple economic setbacks during the year dampened growth beyond expectations and led to a stronger than anticipated easing in the fourth quarter. Based on a consensus of economic forecasters, WTO said the present trade forecast assumes global output growth of 2.1% in 2012 at market exchange rates, down from 2.4% in 2011. However, there are severe downside risks for growth that could have even greater negative consequences for trade if they came to pass. “These include a steeper than expected downturn in Europe, financial contagion related to the sovereign debt crisis, rapidly rising oil prices, and geopolitical risks,” it said. WTO economists cautioned that preliminary trade figures for 2011 and forecasts for 2012 were difficult to gauge due to the extraordinary levels of volatility in financial markets and in the broader economy for the last few years. 

April 17, 2012  EU.  A study recently released by the University of Cambridge shows that the European Union’s move to regulate carbon emissions for aircraft is likely to stand up to scrutiny by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Countries including the U.S., China, Russia and India have criticized the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS), which requires all aircraft landing in and departing from Europe to surrender enough carbon dioxide allowances to cover their emissions. Allowances up to a fixed overall cap are given to participants for free or must be bought at auctions or on the carbon market. “It’s a bit messy, but I think at the end of the day it’s justifiable,” Lorand Bartels, a senior lecturer in WTO and international law at the university’s Trinity Hall, told Bloomberg. “On most points it’s OK in that it’s justified on environmental grounds.” Officials from 29 countries, including the U.S., signed a declaration protesting the EU law in February and said they would consider retaliatory actions, including barring their air carriers from participating in the ETS, challenging the system at the WTO, and imposing additional charges on EU carriers. While extending the ETS to aviation could violate global trade rules, the WTO permits measures that are necessary “to protect human, animal or plant life or health.” A successful WTO complaint would have to show that the EU could have achieved the same goal using another means that is both “reasonably available and less trade-restrictive than the measure adopted. This is notoriously difficult to assess in the abstract,” writes Bartels. One contradiction within the ETS, says Bartels, is that it offers an incentive for airplanes to make stopovers because CO2 emissions are calculated based on the last place an aircraft lands before entering the EU. Airlines must pay for carbon emissions depending on the distance flown; meaning a flight from Los Angeles to London via New York would result in lower emission costs than a direct flight from Los Angeles to London, even though it would mean higher CO2 discharges.

April 16, 2012  WTO trade panel.  World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Pascal Lamy yesterday announced the composition of a panel of WTO stakeholders he has charged with examining and analysing challenges to global trade in the 21st century. At the WTO’s eight Ministerial Conference in December 2011, Lamy suggested that the profound transformations in the world economy require the WTO and the multilateral trading system to look at the drivers of today and tomorrow’s trade, to look at trade patterns and at what it means to open global trade in the 21st century, bearing in mind the role of trade in contributing to sustainable development, growth, jobs and poverty alleviation. According to Lamy, the analysis of these world trade drivers, which will be produced by the 12 panellists in early 2013, can make an important contribution to debate between members on the best way to tackle these challenges.  The “WTO Panel on Defining the Future of Trade”, will meet several times in 2012.  The diversity of the panel is a reflection of the scale of the topic, including Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce; Festus Gontebanye Mogae, former President of Botswana and George Yeo, former Foreign Minister, Singapore.

April 13, 2012  G20.  G20 economy and trade ministers will meet next week in Mexico to seek a boost in trade as part of efforts to tackle Europe's debt crisis, Mexican officials said Thursday. The Group of 20 is "committed to the opening of markets and a multilateral trade system based on clear and fair rules as the only way out faced with the prevailing economic challenges," said Francisco Rosenzweig, Mexico's deputy secretary for external trade, said in Mexico City. Mexico, which heads the group representing the 20 leading and emerging economies until November 2012, "considers it essential to avoid measures affecting commercial flows which impact negatively on economic growth," Rosenzweig said. Nineteen ministers and six deputy ministers from the G20 and invited nations including Spain, Cambodia, New Zealand and Singapore were due to attend the April 18-20 meeting in the Mexican Pacific resort of Puerto Vallarta. The heads of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are also expected at the event. The immediately follows the World Economic Forum on Latin America, also in Puerto Vallarta, on April 17-18. That meeting, which will seek to promote inter-regional trade, expects some 900 participants from 70 countries, including the presidents of Spain and Guatemala. Both meetings come ahead of a G20 summit in the Pacific resort of Los Cabos, northwest Mexico, in June. 

April 12, 2012  India.   India is challenging the US at the World Trade Organisation over increased visa fees for skilled workers that have hit the country’s flagship outsourcing firms, an official said yesterday. “We are pursuing this at the consultation level. It is our hope we reach an amicable conclusion,” a senior commerce department official in New Delhi said, asking not to be named.  India has sought consultations with Washington, which is the first step in the World Trade Organisation’s complaints process, he said.  Commmerce Minister Anand Sharma discussed the visa issue with his US counterpart John Bryson when he visited New Delhi last month, the official added.  More than half of the world’s top 500 companies outsource work to India which has become the world’s back office where Western firms have set up call centres, and number-crunching and software development outlets to cut costs.  But the Indian industry, which expects to earn $78bn in export revenues this year, also flies thousands of employees each year to the US to work at their clients’ locations as on-site technicians and engineers.  US sponsors of the legislation said the law would hike fees for certain Indian outsourcing firms, naming Wipro, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, which they accused of seeking to “exploit” visas to “import foreign workers.”  The companies denied the allegations and Indian industry officials called the legislation discriminatory. Under the 2010 law, US visa fees for skilled workers nearly doubled to $4,500 from $2,500 for firms with more than a 50% non-American workforce. A US embassy spokesman had no immediate comment.  Commercial ties between India and the US flourished after India’s economic liberalisation in 1991, but in recent years each side has accused the other of erecting unfair barriers to trade and investment growth. 

April 11, 2012  India and WTO.  India wants "consultations" at the World Trade Organization on US import duties on steel pipes, a news agency reported Tuesday, citing a senior trade ministry official. The US Commerce Department in March set initial duties of 285.95 percent on steel pipes from India, citing unfair government subsidies, and is expected to make a final decision by August. The official said "there is no subsidy involved," agency reported.

April 10, 2012  US and WTO.  A landmark U.S. health policy already was being struck down even as protestors surrounded the Supreme Court over the attack on President Obama's healthcare law. Behind closed doors in Geneva, a World Trade Organization (WTO) tribunal issued a final ruling ordering the U.S. to dump a landmark 2009 youth anti-smoking law.  The Obama administration's key health care achievement slammed by the WTO was the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA), sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). The ruling, issued Wednesday, was on the final U.S. appeal which means that now the U.S. has 60 days to begin to implement the WTO's orders or face trade sanctions.  This outrageous WTO ruling should be a wake up call. Increasingly "trade" agreements are being used to undo important domestic consumer, environmental and health policies. Instead, the Obama administration has intensified its efforts to expand these very rules in a massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "free trade" agreement.

The WTO's ruling against banning the sale of flavored cigarettes isn't the only example of its attack on consumer protection and health laws. The U.S. has filed WTO appeals on two other U.S. consumer laws -- U.S. country-of-origin meat labels and the U.S. dolphin-safe tuna label -- both were slammed by lower WTO tribunals in the past six months. Yup, in short order we could see the WTO hating on Flipper, feeding us mystery meat and getting our kids addicted to smoking. The challenged tobacco control U.S. law was designed to reduce teen smoking by banning "starter flavorings," since tobacco firms had begun marketing flavors like cola, chocolate, strawberry and clove. The 2009 law forced U.S. firms to cease sales of these products, whether imported or domestically produced. Wednesday, the WTO sided with Indonesia, who claimed that the U.S. ban of their imported clove-favored cigarettes should not be allowed. A key reason was that the U.S. had not banned all flavored-cigarettes (namely menthols).

April 9, 2012  Indonesia and US.  Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of clove cigarettes, has won a tobacco dispute with the United States after the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in its favor, saying that the US ban on clove cigarettes was discriminatory as the country still allowed sales of similarly flavored cigarettes. The Trade Ministry’s international trade cooperation head, Iman Pambagyo, welcomed the ruling, saying that Indonesia’s winning the case would be important not only for Indonesia, but also other countries in terms of respecting the institution’s ruling. The government would continue in its commitment to international agreements under the WTO, especially regarding the technical barriers to trade (TBT) agreement, he said. “All countries must respect it [the agreement]. With this ruling, we expect other countries will not follow the US’ move,” he said in a statement on Thursday. The WTO’s appellate body ruled on Wednesday that the US had been discriminatory in its ban on sales of clove cigarettes as it continued to allow sales of “like-products”, particularly menthol-flavored cigarettes. The US government has expressed its disappointment over the outcome of the dispute. “The ban on cigarettes with flavors is part of landmark US legislation to combat the public health crisis caused by tobacco products,” Nkenge Harmon, spokeswoman for the US Trade Representative’s Office, said as quoted by Reuters. The office was examining its options in complying with the ruling, she added. US compliance through barring sales of menthol cigarettes will affect its local cigarette makers, including Lorillard Inc, the Philip Morris USA unit of Altria Group, RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. of Reynolds American Inc., and Liggett Vector Brands LLC. It can also comply with the WTO ruling by creating new trade concessions with Indonesia, as it has already done in a few other disputes where the US Congress was unwilling to change the law. 

April 6, 2012  Good Friday.

April 5, 2012  Myanmar.  The Obama administration announced its most significant steps to date to normalize relations with Myanmar on Wednesday, lifting a travel ban on some of the country’s senior leaders and easing sanctions on American investments there as Myanmar confirmed the opposition’s weekend electoral sweep. “The result of the April 1 parliamentary bi-election represents a dramatic demonstration of popular will that brings a new generation of reformers into government,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. “This is an important step for the country’s transformation.  Myanmar state media published the final list of winners on Wednesday, confirming that the opposition party led by the long-suppressed pro-democracy figure, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, won 43 seats in Parliament, while the ruling party and a smaller ethnic-based party won one seat each.  The ruling party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, is backed by the military. Its lone victory came in a contest in which the main opposition candidate was barred because of a breach of electoral rules involving the citizenship of his parents.     

April 4, 2012  US.  The United States said on Friday it would appeal a World Trade Organization ruling against a law requiring country-of-origin labels on all meat sold in grocery stores, a move that disappointed Canada and Mexico, both of which want the law changed. The meat labels became mandatory in March 2009 after years of debate. U.S. consumer and mainline farm groups supported the requirement, saying consumers should have information to distinguish between U.S. and foreign products. Big meat processors opposed the provision, which they said would unnecessarily boost costs and disrupt trade. A WTO panel ruled in November that the country-of-origin labeling, or COOL, provision violated WTO rules on technical barriers to trade. The case was brought by Canada and Mexico, which have sizeable cattle and hog trade with the United States. Andrea Mead, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative's office, said the November ruling confirmed the United States has the right to adopt mandatory COOL requirements to help consumers make informed purchasing decisions.   

April 3, 2012  US, EU and Argentina.  Argentina came under a barrage of criticism at the World Trade Organization on Friday, where the United States, European Union, Japan and 10 other countries accused it of tying up imports in red tape.Argentina's center-left government has imposed a raft of sometimes unorthodox import restrictions in recent years as it battles to shield local industry and its trade surplus, which shrank 11 percent in 2011 to $10.4 billion.  On February 1, President Cristina Fernandez's administration imposed a new system to pre-approve, or reject, nearly every purchase from abroad. "It appears that this new system is operating as a de facto import-restricting scheme on all products," the U.S. ambassador to the WTO, Michael Punke, said, according to a transcript provided to Reuters by one of the participants. The critics described the policy as "unbefitting any WTO member" and "particularly troubling" because they limit the growth-enhancing prospects for trade. They demanded Argentina take immediate steps to reverse its policies or risk further action at the WTO. Argentina has also been pushing importers to match their purchases abroad with exports, leading to quirky deals such as one whereby carmaker BMW exports rice. Friday's joint statement at the WTO said government officials were apparently using arm-twisting tactics to enforce the agreements - a frequent complaint of local businesses in Latin America's No. 3 economy.

April 2, 2012  WTO.  The World Trade Organization [WTO] has underlined, in the conclusion of the 2nd Trade Policy Review [TPR] of the United Arab Emirates at the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva, the important role the UAE plays in global trade and in the multilateral trading system, expressing its hope for more prosperity and success for the UAE in building a more advanced knowledge-based economy and in strengthening its role in the organization to further strengthen the foundations of the multilateral trading system. Colombian Ambassador Eduardo Munoz, the Chairman of the WTO Trade Policy Review Body, said in the concluding remarks of the Trade Policy Review of the UAE, that “ this Review has confirmed the important role played by the UAE in the multilateral trading system and the benefits of maintaining an open economy”. Munoz added that WTO “members commended the UAE [during TPR discussions] for the bold steps taken to diversify the economy away from oil and gas’. The Chairman pointed out that the members also praised the country’s open trade regime, which applies low tariffs that have not exceeded 4.9 percent in 2011, enabling the UAE to “successfully weather the global crisis without backsliding on trade liberalization”. Munoz added: “Members encouraged the UAE to continue its reforms in order to achieve its goal, based on the ‘UAE Vision 2021’, to transform the economy into one that is knowledge-based, highly productive, and competitive”. He also pointed out that “Members welcomed the UAE’s commitment to the multilateral trading system and encouraged it to further foster its participation” in order to achieve its economic diversification related goals.

March 30, 2012  EU - US Free Trade Agreement.  Business groups from the U.S. and the European Union last week called on U.S. and European leaders to move forward with the creation of a barrier-free trans-Atlantic market. In an email interview, Fredrik Erixon, the director of the European Center for International Political Economy, discussed the prospects for a U.S.-European Union free trade agreement (FTA). 

WPR: What impact would a FTA have on U.S.-EU trade, and what sectors would be most affected?

Fredrik Erixon: It would have a positive influence on trade, jobs and growth on both sides of the Atlantic. If you eliminate or reduce trade restrictions between two of the biggest economies in the world, with almost $700 billion in two-way trade, the gains will be substantial. That’s the basic economics of bilateral trade agreements: If you do them with small economies, the benefits will be small, but if you do them with big economies, the gains will be big. The biggest gains would probably come from slashing nontariff barriers and opening up the service sector to the same degree of crossborder integration as in the goods sector. The entire economy would be affected, not only those sectors that would be liberalized. 

WPR: What are the major obstacles preventing an FTA between the U.S. and the EU?

Erixon: The arguments against a trans-Atlantic FTA in the past have been that it would kill trade multilateralism if the EU and the U.S. took their bilateral trade business out of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The U.S. has also feared that agricultural protectionism in Europe is too strong for any meaningful liberalization of trade in food and agricultural products to occur. Today, however, these arguments are weak. Now it is more technical and process problems that negotiators need to find answers to. One is that negotiators will aim too low and that the potential gains will be too small to motivate leaders to make the tough decisions that always have to be made in a trade negotiation. Another concern is that both sides may aim too high -- and demand from each other what simply cannot be delivered. Also, they need to find a strategy for negotiating a comprehensive, all-encompassing agreement and sequencing the negotiations in a way that allow for quick progress. Finally, reducing nontariff barriers between the two major standard-setting powers in the world will require will power and imagination. They cannot simply do what they otherwise do in FTA negotiations with smaller economies, that is, demand that the smaller parties sign up to the standards used in the EU or the U.S.

WPR: What impact would a U.S.-EU FTA have on both sides' broader trade relations as well as on their major trading partners?

Erixon: I have argued that they should not see this as a narrow FTA negotiation, but rather as a starting point for greater, joint leadership in global trade policy. If they sign an FTA, they should keep it open to any other country that wants to join. And they should also take initiatives at the WTO that use the tailwind from a concluded FTA to push other countries to prefer more trade liberalization rather than the status quo. No doubt other countries would fear losing current or future trade with the EU and the U.S. if they stand outside such a trade agreement. But constructive initiatives could turn that fear into new multilateral or plurilateral liberalization at the WTO. This is how multilateral liberalization has been achieved on many occasions in the past.

March 29, 2012  Canada.  The legality of government support for renewable energy initiatives took centre stage in Geneva this week, with a landmark case against Canada being heard at the WTO. A three person dispute panel heard opening arguments in cases launched by Japan and the EU - DS412 and DS426, respectively - over the Canadian province of Ontario’s local content requirements in its feed-in tariff (FIT) scheme. In a highly welcome move, the parties had decided to allow the public to attend the first part of the 27-28 March hearing, which is the stage where parties read out their statements. However, the second part, where parties respond to panel questions, was closed to the public. The Ontario programme in question aims at increasing the share of renewable energy in the province’s electricity mix by insulating green energy producers from risks, and facilitating investments that would otherwise be costly. While Ottawa maintains that the programme is necessary to incentivise clean energy generation, Brussels and Tokyo are concerned over the programme’s subsidising effect. The main thrust of both complaints is that Ontario’s renewable energy feed-in tariff programme unfairly discriminates against foreign renewable energy products through its “domestic content” clause. 

March 28, 2012  WTO.  World Trade Organization Director- General Pascal Lamy urged governments examining how fluctuating currencies affect trade to have a “rational, fact-based discussion” on what he called a “highly sensitive subject.” Lamy made the remarks as governments, international groups, academics and the private sector gathered in Geneva today for a meeting examining exchange-rate misalignments and their impact on trade. The two-day symposium was organized at the request of Brazil, which along with the U.S. and Europe says China keeps the yuan undervalued to boost exports and lower unemployment. “I appreciate the uncertainty associated with some erratic movements of exchange rates can be not only a source of frustration, but also of asymmetric costs, which can distort international competition,” Lamy said. “This seminar is to examine the subject in a rational way, and avoid finger-pointing and frustration, which can only influence ill-designed trade- policy responses.” Measures to underpin growth through low interest rates and higher liquidity have driven investors to seek higher returns in emerging markets such as Brazil, driving up the value of their currencies. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff pledged earlier this month to take all necessary steps to shield Latin America’s biggest economy from what she dubbed a “monetary tsunami” unleashed by rich nations seeking to devalue their currencies.

March 27, 2012  Mexico.  Mexico plans to defend a World Trade Organization ruling against meat-labeling requirements after the U.S. appealed the decision on Friday, the Economy Ministry said.  The final decision is expected to come by the end of June. Last November, the WTO ruled that the country-of-origin requirements, known as COOL, discriminate against beef and pork from Canada and Mexico. After the U.S. appealed the decision, the Mexican ministry said it would stand by its argument that the requirements "constitute an unnecessary obstacle to trade," and don't meet the objective of providing information for consumers. The ministry said U.S. processing plants, in order to comply with the labeling rules, limit purchases of Mexican livestock and also apply discounts of up to $60 per head.

March 26, 2012  Japan and Canada.  The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Canada Beef welcomed Sunday's announcement of a Canada-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The prime minister is on a six-day tour of Asia, with stops in Thailand, Japan and South Korea. "Canada and Japan have largely complementary economies. Greater effective market access through an Economic Partnership Agreement could yield economic gains for both countries," Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement issued Sunday morning. "This visit and this announcement highlight the strong relations between our two countries. They demonstrate Canada's re-engagement in Asia, and that is great news for the Canadian business community." Japan remains the world's third largest economy and Asia's second, just behind China.

March 22, 2012  Japan and China.  The Wall Street Journal notes that Japan's decision to join the U.S. and European complaint to the World Trade Organization about China's rare earth export restrictions is the first time Tokyo has resorted to the WTO in a dispute with China. The piece suggests that the case reflects a broader change in Japanese strategy: Fearing confrontation and retaliation, Tokyo has until now opted to use bilateral channels to settle disputes with China. "We are beginning to feel bilateral talks don't work in some cases," one Japanese government official involved in the filing said. "They have to be dealt with multilaterally." As the WTO data below indicate, both Japan and China have been quite sparing in their use of the WTO's formal dispute resolution process. Given the size of their economies, they are significantly less litigious than other major players:

United States 100; European Union 86; Canada 33; Brazil 25; Mexico 21; India 20; Japan 15; Argentina 15; South Korea 15; China 8; Australia 7; Indonesia 5 and Turkey 2. 

March 21, 2012   US and China.  The United States on Tuesday dealt a blow to U.S. manufacturers of solar panels and boosted shares in their Chinese rivals when it imposed preliminary punitive duties of less than 5 percent on imports from China. Nonetheless, the action adds to trade tensions between the world's two largest economies and threatens cooperation in the burgeoning clean-energy sector, which both countries say they want to promote. President Barack Obama, running for re-election in November, has promised to crack down on unfair Chinese trade practices and last week challenged China's export restrictions on critical "rare earth" industrial materials in a case filed with the European Union and Japan at the World Trade Organization. Energy analysts had expected Chinese imports of solar panels to be hit with preliminary duties of 20 percent to 30 percent, but the rates announced on Tuesday ranged from just 2.90 percent to 4.73 percent. Tuesday's trade move is the latest salvo from Washington in its efforts to help the nascent U.S. clean energy industry compete against China's fast-growing companies, which are the leading suppliers to the global solar market.

March 20, 2012  Laos.   Laos could join the World Trade Organization by the end of 2012 as negotiations for its membership are accelerating, said the chair of Laos' accession talks Yi Xiaozhun. Laos' commerce minister Nam Viyaketh said it was an "ambitious goal" but "a realistic objective." The Southeast Asian nation has just one outstanding bilateral negotiation -- with Ukraine, which Yi sees ending by mid-April. However, it would still have to revise several pieces of legislation on market access in order to conform to WTO rules. Laos, one of the world's poorest states, applied to become a member of the trade bloc in 1997, but negotiations only began in proper in 2004.

March 19, 2012  Europe.  A call for a “Buy European Act” by French President Nicolas Sarkozy based on a US law that obliges use of domestically-made products in public contracts, could prove troublesome, economists warn. The proposal, made in a speech that also called for tighter borders to keep illegal immigrants out of Europe, was part of a flurry of promises designed to help Sarkozy catch up with Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande before a presidential vote in late April and May. Sarkozy said European companies should have priority when European states award contracts, but economists warned that the measures, while perhaps smart politics, would face stiff legal and political challenges. If Europe embraces protectionism “it will be difficult to sustain it against countries like China whose borders we want opened,” said Christophe Destais, deputy director of the Paris-based CEPII economic think tank. Measures boosting investment should be “non-protectionist”, the EU Financial Services Commissioner Michel Barnier said, while adding that the European Union was working on achieving better reciprocity on investment from trading partners. Thibault Lanxade from France’s MEDEF business lobby supported the idea of an Act but warned that France and other nations had made a commitment to the World Trade Organization in 1994 to compete fairly on public contracts. And preferring Europeans could dash existing efforts towards getting China to join WTO agreements on attributing public contracts, warned Patrick Messerlin, professor of economics at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris. 

March 16, 2012  US.  Leading Democratic senators are calling for the repeal of a Cold War era-law that has complicated trade relations with Russia.Without action to repeal a law known as the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, U.S. companies would be shut out of trading opportunities after Russia gains entry to the World Trade Organization this year.At a hearing Thursday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus warned that U.S. companies could lose business to China and European countries. Baucus's committee would have to approve legislation eliminating Jackson-Vanik before it could be considered by the full Senate. The legislation would also need to be approved by the House of Representatives and signed by the president.But the move to repeal the law faces opposition by lawmakers concerned about Russia's human rights record.

March 15, 2012  US and UK.  President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron discussed the possibility of releasing emergency oil reserves during a meeting on Wednesday, two sources familiar with the talks said, the first sign that Obama is starting to test global support for an effort to knock back near-record fuel prices. Obama raised the issue during a broad bilateral meeting at the White House, according to a UK official with knowledge of the discussion. Asked about the talks, a senior Obama administration official said: "No agreement was reached. We will continue to work together to address energy security and oil price issues." While U.S. officials have said for weeks that they will consider all possible measures - including a release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) - to prevent prices from derailing a nascent economic recovery, Wednesday's meeting was the clearest indication that diplomatic talks were moving ahead. Discussions could last as long as several months before any decision is made, one of the sources said.

March 14, 2012  Rare Earth minerals.  The United States, the European Union and Japan are filing a challenge with the World Trade Organization against China's export restrictions on minerals that are crucial for the production of many high-tech devices, President Barack Obama announced Tuesday.  In a statement to reporters at the White House, Obama said the case seeks to force China to lift export limits on certain minerals known as rare earths. China produces 97% of all rare earths, according to the European Union. The materials are used in products such as flat-screen televisions, smart phones, hybrid car batteries, wind turbines, energy-efficient lighting, electronics, cars and petroleum.

March 13, 2012  WTO and Boeing.  The World Trade Organization said on Monday it had upheld the bulk of a ruling that Boeing received billions of dollars of subsidies to compete with Europe's Airbus, as both sides once again claimed victory in a long-running trade row. The unfair subsidies included at least $2.6 billion in assistance from space agency NASA, which the WTO's appellate body agreed had allowed the U.S. company to launch its modern 787 Dreamliner, causing "serious prejudice" to Airbus. The ruling is the latest step in a seven-year dispute involving mutual claims of aid for the world's dominant planemakers and could theoretically lead to retaliation on both sides once the Geneva trade body's procedures are exhausted. The WTO has already ruled that Airbus received illegal aid through a system of European government loans but the two sides cannot agree on the scope or impact of that ruling. Most observers expect the United States and the European Union will eventually negotiate a settlement to end the row, but warn it could rumble on for years amid further bickering. The EU says it complied with WTO findings against Airbus last December, but the United States questions this and is about to go back to WTO compliance referees while threatening to hit the European Union with sanctions worth $7-10 billion. The United States will have six months to comply with the latest ruling once the WTO has formally adopted it, which it is expected to do at a meeting on March 23.

March 12, 2012  Pakistan and India.  Pakistan has decided in principle to complete the process of granting India the Most Favoured Nation status of WTO parlance by the end of this year. India has welcomed this decision as it would be able to sell Pakistan a lot more. And therefore the opponents of this process are back with their polemic, saying that open trade with India threatens Pakistan’s economic security. Even though the anti-trade lobby is losing support, they can argue that the liberalisation of trade with India has far-reaching implications. The government’s gingerly forward and backward steps on this issue over the past few months are sufficient proof that MFN is far bigger than allowing Bollywood into our cinemas and our living rooms. But, seriously, Pakistan cannot delay the process indefinitely without facing multiple consequences. 

It is common knowledge that the circuitous trade with India through third countries results in extra costs for the Pakistani consumers. If Pakistan imports the same goods from other producers at higher costs, we as consumers again bear the price differential. A highly restrictive trade regime between Pakistan and India also means that SAFTA cannot really take off, thereby resulting in retardation of moves towards greater economic cooperation between SAARC member-countries. The current levels of trade between South Asian countries leave the subcontinent way behind regional models like Mercosur in South America and Asean, to say nothing of free trade areas like the European Union and Nafta.  

March 9, 2012  Tariffs.  Nothing engenders bipartisan harmony like a bill that targets both China and American jobs. With President Barack Obama about to sign into law a measure that lets Washington impose duties on subsidized goods, the question isn’t whether China games the system by supporting key industries—it’s the impact those subsidies have on U.S. jobs.

The law will essentially uphold duties on imports of two dozen “undervalued” products from China and Vietnam, including tires, steel, aluminum, paper, and chemicals. While the $4.7 billion value of those imports is a fraction of the roughly $400 billion of goods the U.S. imported from China last year, the measures against them have apparently saved 80,000 U.S. jobs since 2007, according to proponents of the bill. As Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said: “China doesn’t get a free pass to violate the rules at the expense of American jobs.” Frank Vargo of the National Association of Manufacturers, meanwhile, wrote that failing to impose such punitive measures would leave Americans “defenseless against rampant deep pocket Chinese.”

Even if that’s true, it’s worth questioning Washington’s assertion that this collection of tariffs has saved thousands of American jobs. The link between trade volume and actual job numbers is an imprecise science at best. Calculating the benefits and collateral damage of duties is even harder. Free-trade advocates, when faced with opponents who treat trade as a zero-sum game, have long made the argument that open borders enlarge the pie for everyone. While currency manipulation and artificially low prices clearly extract a cost from American manufacturers, moves to correct them don’t necessarily translate into more jobs.

So what’s behind the 80,000 figure that’s been held out as an indisputable fact? Those are the jobs that presumably would have evaporated without tariff protection as U.S. companies dumped their American suppliers and contracted with Chinese ones instead. After all, the average consumer doesn’t typically make purchase decisions over aluminum, steel, and chemicals. While cost may be a key consideration for corporate buyers, integrated supply chains and other factors play a role as well. And higher costs hardly help the buyer create more jobs at home.

March 8, 2012   China and US.  A U.S. trade bill targeting Chinese imports goes against international rules and Beijing will not adjust the value of its currency to try to bridge a trade deficit that is Washington's problem to fix, China's commerce minister said on Wednesday. President Barack Obama is set to sign the bill into law to allow duties to be imposed on subsidized goods from China and Vietnam, which the White House says will protect American jobs. "We follow the rules of the WTO, but we have no obligation to follow domestic laws or regulations in any specific country that go beyond international rules," Commerce Minister Chen Deming told a news conference on the sidelines of an annual meeting of parliament. He said China had done a better job of bringing balance to global trade than the United States, bringing its trade surplus down to 2.1 percent of economic output in 2011 while the trade deficit of the United States was 4.8 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). Chen said it was clear that the United States had a responsibility to close its own deficit.

March 7, 2012  US and India.  The United States on Tuesday began action at the World Trade Organization to open India's market for poultry meat and eggs, saying an Indian ban on U.S. imports intended to stop the spread of bird flu was not based on sound science. "The United States is the world's leader in agricultural safety and we are confident that the WTO will confirm that India's ban is unjustified," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement on the U.S. request for consultations. India's ban in the name of protecting local poultry producers from losses caused by avian influenza is "clearly a case of disguising trade restrictions by invoking unjustified animal health concerns," Kirk said. The U.S. poultry industry welcomed the move, which they said could pry open a market for U.S. poultry exports conservatively valued at more than $300 million. "In our view, India's posture is thinly guised protectionism," Jim Sumner, president of the U.S. Poultry and Egg Export Council, said in a statement.

March 6, 2012  G-8.   Even if everything goes according to plan, the first day of the G-8summit will be a very trying Saturday in May for the Chicago Police Department. At least two major demonstrations are planned for downtown, and organizers of both want to send crowds of marchers down Michigan Avenue in the middle of the day. And those are just the ones police know about because demonstration leaders sought city permits. Police officials have estimated that 2,000 to 10,000 demonstrators may show up in search of a global spotlight during the three days of the overlapping Group of Eight and North Atlantic Treaty Organization meetings, but some experts believe the crowds could swell to multiples of that range. Whatever the numbers on May 19-21, police have to be ready to handle it without missing a beat on their usual priorities. While the department has remained secretive about its plans, police officials said training for the summits has been far more extensive than for the last such event in town.

March 5, 2012  Geneva.  Geneva’s international profile was particularly high during the past week. The Human Rights Council condemned Syria but also highlighted growing concerns over Sri Lanka, the World Trade Organization picked up the Acta Internet freedom debate, Cern announced it will be using cloud computing to help handle massive LHC data and a campaign was kicked off to to raise awareness about anti-personnel landmine issues. The International Red Cross Saturday morning 3 March has a team ready to provide emergency supplies to badly hit Baba Amr in Homs, Syria, after being told it could go in, with permission then denied. 

March 3, 2012  Russia.  Russia made an unexpected offer to Georgia late Friday to re-establish diplomatic relations that were severed when the neighboring countries went to war in 2008. A senior Georgian official said that his country was ready to begin a dialogue with Russia, but that relations could not be restored until Russia withdrew troops from two rebel Georgian regions that Moscow recognized as independent after the war. 
“They want to have diplomatic relations with Georgia while occupying 20 percent of its territory and basically not respecting the very fact of the independence of the country,” the Georgian official, Giga Bokeria, said in a phone interview. “This is confusing.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry did not indicate in its statement on Friday whether Moscow was willing to withdraw troops from the two rebel regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, or recognize Georgia’s sovereignty over them as nearly all other countries do.

March 2, 2012  Airbus and Boeing.  Airbus and Boeing Co were urged on Wednesday to negotiate an end to the world's largest trade dispute as the World Trade Organization (WTO) prepared to issue its latest findings in a long-running subsidy row. The Geneva-based trade watchdog was due later on Wednesday to deliver its verdict on an appeal by the United States against a WTO ruling that Boeing benefited from at least $5.3 billion in subsidies from US authorities. The ruling last March came months after a separate panel of WTO experts found that Airbus drew on billions of dollars of subsidies through subsidized loans by European governments. Both sides have claimed victory every step of the way in the epic contest between dominant planemakers which has dragged on for over seven years, consuming thousands of pages of reports and costing an estimated $100 million or more in legal bills. “The only way this can be resolved is a permanent agreement between all the parties concerned and there is no sign of this happening yet,” said UK-based aerospace and defence consultant Howard Wheeldon. “There is no alternative to an agreement between the governments and the two warring parties,” Wheeldon added. Sources familiar with the matter said last week the WTO would issue its confidential appeal findings to the two parties, the United States and the European Union, at 13:00 SA time on Wednesday. The report is not expected to be made public for several weeks but extracts of such findings tend to leak out beforehand. The United States says the WTO has already put its finger on $18 billion in illegal subsidies paid to Airbus in the earlier case and wants to start the clock ticking on annual sanctions of between $7 billion and $10 billion without being distracted by the new appeal. The European Union wants to narrow a nine-month gap between the two cases and open the door to negotiations, but only if the US drops a condition that Airbus should axe subsidies first.

March 1, 2012  WTO rules.  The World Trade Organization has ruled on appeals brought by the European Union and the U.S. in a long-running spat over U.S. aid to Chicago-based Boeing.  The WTO says its appellate panel issued the ruling confidentially to the two parties Wednesday. It is likely to be made public in the coming weeks.  The EU and the U.S. last year appealed the decision of a WTO panel that found Boeing had received more than $5 billion in prohibited U.S. subsidies to develop and build new planes. The EU says the illegal subsidies were far higher.  The case mirrors a U.S. complaint Washington brought over European aid to Boeing rival Airbus.  U.S. trade officials say Brussels has so far failed to comply with that panel's order to slash support for Airbus. 

February 29, 2012 Leap Year celebrations!

February 28, 2012 Azerbaijan.  A Delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammadguliyev, participated in the next working group meeting, as well as in bilateral meetings on goods and services in Geneva in the framework of the IX round of multilateral talks on Azerbaijan's membership in the WTO, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday. "Bilateral talks were held with the U.S., EU, Norway, Canada, Ecuador and Japan" the press service of the Foreign Ministry said. The Azerbaijani delegation also held meetings with several officials of the WTO and UN experts during the visit to Geneva. Azerbaijan has been represented at the World Trade Organisation as an observer since 1997 and began negotiations in 2004. Azerbaijan holds bilateral negotiations with the United States, Japan, Brazil, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, European Union, Norway, India, South Korea, Taiwan Province of China, Canada and Switzerland for today. Negotiations with Turkey, the Sultanate of Oman, United Arab Emirates, Georgia have been completed and protocols were signed. The country is in the process of signing the protocol with Moldova, which still considers the document, while Kyrgyzstan has agreed to sign. 

February 27, 2012 South Korea and US.  The World Trade Organization has agreed to decide whether the US use of so called zeroing to calculate anti dumping duties on some South Korean steel products violates global trade rules. South Korea filed a request for consultations in January 2011 over the US use of zeroing in anti dumping calculations on Korean corrosion resistant carbon steel flat products.  The WTO has ruled several times against the methodology, under which the US sets the cost of a product at zero rather than the actual amount, saying it unfairly increases the amount of anti dumping duty that that must be paid. The US announced earlier this month that it had signed an agreement with the European Union and Japan to end their longstanding disputes over zeroing. Dumping occurs when companies export goods at a loss, or at prices below what the products fetch in their domestic market.  

February 24, 2012  Philippines.  The Philippines’ petition for the World Trade Organization (WTO) to stop the influx of imported rice is facing opposition from the United States government, which recently protested the country’s strict regulations on meat handling, according to Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala. Alcala said the US government has decided to block the Philippine bid to limit the entry of foreign rice into the domestic market—a regulation that protects Filipino farmers from competing with cheap and subsidized foreign rice—to protest the Department of Agriculture’s Administrative Order No. 22 issued last year. The quantitative restrictions (QR) on rice under the WTO allows the Philippines to limit the volume of rice that can be imported by the government every year, preventing a possible deluge of rice imports. The government has pushed for a three-year extension of the QR, noting that Filipino farmers need protection and encouragement as the country wants to be rice-sufficient by 2013. The Philippines aims to be a rice exporter in the future. Last month, the US Department of Agriculture has asked the DA to suspend the AO 22, saying it has affected the trade of meat and poultry to the Philippines. US meat traders, through the US government, said the new rule has slowed down the issuance of permits for imported meat and poultry. According to the USDA, US meat and poultry exports to the Philippines exceeded $100 million in 2010, up 40 and 50 percent.  

February 23, 2012  Oilsands.  European diplomats have shrugged off a possible Canadian complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) if the E.U. classifies oilsands-derived fuel as "dirty."  "We may be wrong, but we believe that this measure is compatible with WTO rules," said Maurizio Cellini, the European Commission's head of the economic and commercial affairs in Ottawa. His comments come ahead of a Thursday vote among European Commission technical experts in Brussels on the European Fuel Quality Directive. The measure would classify oilsands crude as 22% "dirtier" than conventionally produced fuels, giving it an international stigma and making future imports less attractive to European buyers. Canada has threatened to complain to the WTO. International trade lawyer Lawrence Herman says that's the right move. "The issue is that this regulation appears to be discriminatory on its face," said the lawyer with Cassels Brock & Blackwell. "It sets different criteria for Canadian-made fuel from the oilsands, which is identical in every other way to conventional fuel." Observers say it's unlikely the regulation will be approved Thursday because of opposition from several oilsands-investing countries, include Britain, the Netherlands, and possibly France. 

February 22, 2012  China and Turkey.  Trade relations between China and Turkey will deepen in the coming years despite inevitable frictions, experts said. Gong Xiaosheng, Chinese ambassador to Turkey, agreed with the promising future in Sino-Turkish cooperation. China is the third-biggest trade partner of Turkey, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute. Trade volume between China and Turkey surged by 24 percent year-on-year to $24.2 billion last year. Trade is expected to reach $50 billion in 2015 and $100 billion in 2020, a goal set by Premier Wen Jiabao and his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan during his visit to Turkey in October 2010. However, trade has not always grown smoothly. Turkey had launched 47 anti-dumping investigations against Chinese exports as of August 2008, in addition to six special safeguard measures and 18 general safeguard measures.

February 21, 2012  EU and Canada.  Canada is threatening a trade war with the European Union over a proposal that would effectively ban oil sands bitumen from Europe, the Guardian reported on Monday. "Canada will not hesitate to defend its interests, including at the World Trade Organisation," Canadian envoys stated in multiple letters to European energy officials. The letters were obtained by activist group Friends of the Earth Europe under freedom of information requests. The EU is debating whether to issue a Fuel Quality Directive that would label oil sands product 22 per cent more polluting than conventional oil, effectively banning it from being used in the 25-country area. A vote on the move is scheduled for Feb. 23. 

February 20, 2012 US celebrates Presidents' Day.

February 17, 2012 US-China ties.  Chinese heir apparent Xi Jinping heralded “a new historical starting point” for ties with the United States Wednesday, wooing US business leaders with a glimpse of a more cooperative future. Speaking during a lavish ballroom luncheon with the upper crust of corporate America, Vice President Xi described deeper Sino-American ties as an “unstoppable river that keeps surging ahead.” Glossing over the tumultuous twists and turns in 30 years of Cold War-dominated relations, Xi said interests had become ever-more intertwined. “It is a course that cannot be stopped or reversed,” he said. Xi welcomed Washington's interest in the Asia Pacific region, and said cooperation was needed on a range of challenges from North Korea to Iran, so long as China's interests are also respected. Xi is on his maiden visit to the United States as a top official, a trip many hope will help close a chapter in relations characterized by mistrust and mudslinging, particularly in the commercial sphere. As the tectonic plates of global trade have shifted in recent decades, China and the United States -- the world's two largest economies -- have frequently collided, jutted and bumped against each other, sometimes to damaging effect for both. With Xi widely tipped to lead China from 2013 and Obama in a November re-election battle, the visit is being seen as a dress rehearsal for the next generation of US-China relations.

February 16, 2012 World Bank.   The World Bank announced Wednesday that its president, Robert Zoellick, would leave his post when his five-year term expires on June 30. Zoellick, who has an extensive résumé in government, began his term in 2007 under President George W. Bush. He had served in the Bush administration as deputy secretary of state and U.S. trade representative. The U.S. president traditionally appoints the head of the World Bank. Bloomberg News reported in January that President Obama was considering former economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for the position after Zoellick’s term ends. Yet the open presidency at the World Bank might raise questions about how the leader is selected. There has been a push in recent years to make the process more transparent and include candidates from other countries. Recently, the bank, which offers financial aid to countries around the world, has been trying to assist Eastern Europe and central Asia amid fears about the European sovereign debt crisis.

February 15, 2012 Boeing.  Boeing said it will deliver the first passenger version of its 747-8, the biggest jumbo jet it’s ever built, to an unidentified VIP customer on Feb. 28.  A delivery ceremony has been scheduled for that day near Boeing’s wide-body-jet plant in Everett, Washington, the Chicago-based company said in an e-mail today.  The 747-8 freighter entered service in late 2011, two years behind schedule. Germany’s Deutsche Lufthansa AG is due to receive the first model intended for commercial passenger service early this year. 

February 14, 2012 ACTA.  ACTA will not modify any of the current EU legislation regarding the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Whatever is legal today will remain legal; whatever is illegal will remain illegal. This clear statement was made today by the European Commission during a press conference held to clear any misunderstandings that there might be about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.  “ACTA is a multi-national agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement.” “It provides rules on how one can defend their intellectual property rights either by civil enforcement or when infringements are more serious that can become a crime it has developed rules on how to address this in criminal court proceedings.” “ACTA also gives basic guidelines on how one can proceed when such infringements occur on the internet.” An EC spokesman said that ACTA enshrines what already has existed within the European Union for several years through several directives related to trade including directives about Customs and e-commerce and through national legislation in each member state related to criminal enforcement. None of these instruments will be changed through the ratification of ACTA. The spokesman for the European Commission said that for the EU to remain competitive in key areas of quality, design and innovation, there must be an international framework to protect these ideas. For this reason the EU will be working with emerging economies to accept ACTA and protect intellectual property. Most of ACTA is based on the World Trade Organization’s agreements but so far such trade agreements do not cover the internet. At the same time it is not possible and not the intention of the EU to police the internet. 

February 13, 2012  Russia and the WTO.  Industry experts and analysts have agreed that Russia, whose economy is largely dependent on the oil and gas sector, has been maintaining the status quo by defending export duties for energy and keeping domestic prices low. “In general, the WTO impact on the Russian oil and gas sector is actually fairly minor, despite the fact that oil and gas exports are Russia’s major means of contact with global trade,” Matthew Sagers, the head of IHS CERA’s Russian and Caspian Energy service told Oil&Gas Eurasia. The WTO had wanted Russia to end the practice of charging lower prices for natural gas consumed domestically, and higher prices for gas exports. But Russia won that agrument. Russia will be allowed to place a tax of up to 30 percent on top of the price at which it sells natural gas domestically for the foreseeable future, despite the fact that several government experts, working for the government Strategy 2020 economic plan wanted to abolish them to stimulate economic modernization. On the oil side, similar deliberations took place. At issue were fears that gasoline prices might rise and since the price of natural gas is tied to the price of oil, any adjustment to oil prices would affect natural gas. “The Russian Federation would continue to regulate price suppliers to households and other noncommercial users, based on domestic social policy consideration,” said the document on the Russian WTO agreement, published on the organization’s site. “The government will regulate gas prices for domestic consumption the way it wants. And we don’t have and will not have an obligation to make the internal gas prices conform to the export ones,” Maksim Medvedkov, the chief Russian WTO negotiator told the business daily Kommersant newspaper at the end of 2011. However, at some point, Russia will have to deal with the pain and politically unpopular move of forcing domestic gas producers and distributors to operate on a commercial basis according to WTO rules; just not now.  “With oil prices (and oil-linked export prices for natural gas) being quite high, this would mean a fairly significant increase in domestic gas prices. The government is uncertain about how rapidly this convergence should take place now, but it is now being adjusted further with slower rates of regulated price increases,” Sagers, from the IHS CERA. The Russian gas monopoly won’t lose much from WTO accession, despite the organization’s rules that require that member countries create conditions for independent exporters to emerge. Analysts for Russia’s VTB bank believe that Russia will use domestic legislation to prevent independent exporters from emerging. 

February 10, 2012  Canada and China.  A raft of agreements between Canada and China may see the two countries ready to set sail on free trade talks. But even as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao appeared ready to jump on that ship, Trade Minister Ed Fast was already backpaddling away from the possibility that Canada is ready for a trade deal that could revolutionize the economy. The potential political fall-out from Canada-China free trade talks was made evident in a Canadian Press-Harris Decima survey suggesting Canadians are wary of having the Chinese play a controlling role in the domestic economy. The spectre of a free trade deal was raised as the two countries released a joint statement committing to complete an joint economic study by May. That paves the way, the prime minister said, to move the economic relationship to the next level. "Further diversifying our trading relations has the potential of greatly expanding Canadian growth and job creation," Harper said in a speech to the Canada-China business forum at the close of his stop in Beijing. In a statement posted to the Chinese Foreign Ministry website, Wen had gone further, saying the feasibility of a free trade agreement should be on the table.

February 9, 2012  Dominican Republic.  In a dispute that pitted the Dominican Republic against four of its developing country trading partners, a WTO panel last week ruled that Santo Domingo’s safeguard duties on plastic bags and tubular fabric imported from Central America do indeed violate WTO rules. Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras had challenged the value-added tax at the global trade body, arguing that it violated the WTO’s rules on safeguards contained in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the specialised Safeguards Agreement. These rules permit the imposition of defensive safeguard measures, such as additional duties, when an increase in imports threatens to cause serious injury to domestic producers due to unforeseen events. The complainants had consistently argued that Santo Domingo was unjustifiably seeking shelter under this “emergency agreement” in an attempt to “cover protectionist duties.” The four Central American countries further complained that the measures were applied in a discriminatory manner, given that the Dominican Republic’s safeguard tariffs had not been applied to relevant imports coming from Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, and Panama. The Safeguards Agreement requires most-favoured nation (MFN) treatment among WTO members. 

February 8, 2012  U.S.  The United States said on Monday it has struck a deal sparing U.S. exporters from hundreds of millions of dollars in European and Japanese trade retaliation in a dispute over how Washington calculates anti-dumping duties on steel and other goods. "I am proud to announce today that we have finally put these burdensome and potentially damaging trade disputes behind us," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement on the "zeroing" deal struck with the European Union and Japan. "What this means for the American people and the country as a whole is that American farmers and businesses can invest in job-creating export markets without the uncertainty of possible trade retaliation," Kirk said. The United States has lost numerous cases at the World Trade Organization in the past decade over a practice called "zeroing" used to calculate anti-dumping duties on products it says are being sold in the United States at less than fair value. After Washington took only partial steps to comply with the rulings, Brussels and Tokyo asked the WTO for permission to impose sanctions in order to induce compliance. "This understanding solves this longstanding dispute," said EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said in a statement that estimated the deal could collectively save dozens of European exporters about $15 million a year. "It will bring immediate relief to EU exporters who will no longer have to pay excessive anti-dumping duties; some of them will not pay any anti-dumping duties at all," he said. Countries typically calculate anti-dumping duties by comparing prices on different batches of goods. But in zeroing, authorities ignore examples where the price of the imported good is actually higher than the domestic one, which critics says unfairly inflates the duties. The United States has long defended the practice and still believes zeroing is consistent with global trade rules, despite its string of losses at the WTO. 

February 6, 2012  Cotton.  The consumption of cotton by textile mills in Pakistan would increase following decision of World Trade Organization (WTO) to allow duty-free exports of 75 Pakistani items to European Union (EU) markets for a two-year period. Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association PCGA Chairman, Amanullah Qureshi said cotton consumption by textile mills in the country is likely to surge to 13 million bales of 170kg each, compared to current consumption of around 11 million bales per season. The approval of EU package for Pakistan by WTO’s Council for Trade in Goods (CTG) would boost export orders for yarn and fabrics, which would in turn, raise cotton consumption of spinners and textile mills across the country.  This factor, along with current trend of rising international prices, would result in increase in cotton prices in domestic market to Rs 6500-7000 per maund, he added. Qureshi said cotton growers and ginners would now get fair returns on their produce. Currently, Pakistan exports goods worth 3.5 billion euro per annum to EU. Of this, 75 items that are in EU list alone account for about 921 million euro each year. 

February 3, 2012  China.  China’s rationing of rare earth minerals used in the production of high tech and renewable energy hardware has run afoul of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. Beijing has time to comply with the ruling before a penalty is assessed. The European Union, Mexico, and the United States brought a WTO case against China in 2009 on the basis that it was limiting its rare earth exports while reducing prices on the Chinese market. A ruling favoring the complainants was upheld yesterday. China can be sanctioned if it doesn’t abide by the ruling, which is equivalent to a legal judgment in the United States, said UCLA law professor Richard Steinberg. That process would take up to 18 months, but is an effective deterrent, he added. China joined the WTO in Nov. 2001. “It was Chinese mercantilism at its best: a straightforward, illegal, aggressive effort to manipulate the global market for raw materials, and they lost appropriately,” Steinberg said. China’s handling of rare earth exports are indefensible and violate trade rules that date back to 1947, he explained.   

February 2, 2012  Pakistan.  The Council for Trade in Goods (CTG) on Wednesday unanimously approved a Pakistan-specific EU trade package to allow tariff-free export of 75 Pakistani products to EU markets over the next two years. The package, Autonomous Trade Preferences – approved by the CTG of the World Trade Organization (WTO) at its meeting in Geneva, will enter into force after its formal approval by the WTO General Council in March this year. The EU Trade Package will help Pakistan deal with economic losses caused by the unprecedented floods in Pakistan in 2010. It would help increase Pakistan exports to EU countries and generate thousands of jobs in Pakistan. A statement issued by the Foreign Office said Pakistan was grateful to WTO member countries for their support. “The Government of Pakistan particularly appreciates the European Union and its member states for their commitment to help Pakistan revive and stabilize its economy through trade.” 

February 1, 2012  Kazakhstan.  The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade has developed a quarterly action plan to complete the process of Kazakhstan's joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), Vice-Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Kazakhstan Timur Suleimenov told reporters on Tuesday. Suleimenov noted that it is planned to complete the process of bilateral negotiations during the first quarter, works with partners to adjust the tariff commitments taking into account Russia's WTO accession will be completed during the second quarter. All multilateral negotiations within the Working Group will be completed by November 2012 and the final version of the Working Group report will be prepared. "It is planned to enter the WTO Ministerial Conference in the fourth quarter of 2012, which will allow us to formalize the membership in this organization," Suleimenov said. The plan is developed within the framework of executing the order of President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev on joining the WTO before the end of 2012. 

January 31, 2012  China.  The World Trade Organization ruled Monday that China unfairly limited exports of nine raw materials to protect domestic manufacturers. A WTO appeals body rejected China's appeal of a July ruling that concluded the Asian economic powerhouse had violated international trade rules. The appeals body largely sided with the U.S., European Union and Mexico, which had taken issue with Chinese restrictions on its exports of nine materials used widely in the steel, aluminum and chemical industries.

January 30, 2012  Doha. India, South Africa and Brazil have expressed disappointment over the impasse in the WTO Doha talks for a global trade deal on Saturday and called for the need for resisting protectionism in the current economic situation, local media reported Sunday. Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma said in Davos, Switzerland on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum annual event that global economic conditions are challenging and are in the fourth year of recession. "The only way is to engage more and work for a multilateral trade regime," he said. At a trilateral meeting, the trade ministers of India, South Africa and Brazil said that developed countries had caused distortions by high-level of protection in the form of tariffs and subsidies in agriculture. These distortions continue to undermine the development prospects of developing countries, especially the least developed among them, said the trade ministers. "The ministers expressed deep disappointment at the current impasse in the Doha Development Agenda negotiations," said the ministers in a statement.

January 27, 2012 Mexico.  Mexico appealed a World Trade Organization ruling that U.S. curbs on imports of Mexican tuna, designed to protect dolphins, are more restrictive than needed. Sales of Mexican tuna to the U.S. have been limited since 1991 under Commerce Department provisions that determine when products can be labeled as dolphin-safe. The U.S. adopted the rules in response to complaints that Mexico’s fishing techniques hurt dolphins. Mexico says its tuna-catching practices and regulations meet global standards. The U.S. appealed the WTO’s Sept. 15 ruling last week and Mexico said at the time it planned to appeal the panel’s rejection of its claim that the labeling provisions are discriminatory. Mexico filed its appeal yesterday, the Geneva- based trade arbiter said on its website today. WTO judges found that the dolphin-safe provisions “are more trade-restrictive than necessary to achieve a legitimate objective, taking into account the risks that non-fulfillment would create.” The Appellate Body has three months to issue its report on the appeals.

January 26, 2012  India.  India will oppose any attempts by developed countries to sign a limited market-opening pact and also call for a check on rising protectionism at the meeting of trade ministers from key WTO member countries at Davos later this week. Switzerland is hosting a meeting of trade ministers from select countries that include India, China, Brazil, the US and the EU on Saturday on the sidelines of the on-going World Economic Forum at Davos to assess the impact of the economic turmoil on trade and discuss the future of the WTO.  "We have got reports that some developed members are talking about a plurilateral pact in services. We are yet to know the details, but principally we are against plurilateralism within the multilateral framework of the WTO," an Indian government official told ET.  A pluriltateral agreement involves a few countries, while a multilateral pact includes all countries that are members of a global organization, in this case the WTO. 

January 25, 2012 Russia.  Russia may challenge in court EU anti-dumping law regulations against its metallurgic products after it accedes to the World Trade Organization, Maxim Medvedkov, the head of Russia's delegation in the WTO negotiations, told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Russia. Medvedkov said the export of metallurgic products from Russia to the EU is restricted by quotas and anti-dumping regulations. Although the EU agreed to lift quotas, the parties have thus far failed to reach an agreement on anti-dumping legislation. Medvedkov said he is hopeful that the limits will be eliminated as soon as Russia joins the WTO. If any barriers for the exports remain, Russia will challenge the EU's anti-dumping laws in court. In his interview with journalists, Medvedkov said EU anti-dumping law does not fully comply with the regulations adopted by the WTO in regard to fair value product calculations. The EU is entitled under its legislation to disregard gas prices inside Russia, although they are three times lower than in European countries. Thus, Europeans may use their own gas prices for calculating product costs.  

January 24, 2012  EU and Iranian oil.  Europe banned the import of Iranian oil Monday and froze Europe-based assets of the Central Bank of Iran, intensifying an international campaign to choke Iran’s economy and force the radical Islamic government to dispel fears that it is working to develop nuclear weapons. The ban, decided by foreign ministers of the 27-nation European Union, is a dramatic escalation of sanctions against Iran, joining with the United States to squeeze the oil earnings and financial transactions that the Tehran government depends on to sustain its citizens and finance its military. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, called the E.U. effort “unprecedented” and said it shows the resolve of European governments to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But the decision also includes broad loopholes — including a six-month delay before it goes into effect — that soften its immediate practical impact. Existing contracts for Iranian oil can be respected until July 1, an announcement said, and the ban will come under review before May 1 to see if more flexibility is needed. Countries such as Greece and Italy, suffering under crippling debt burdens, are likely to get more time before they have to break their financial ties to Iran, European diplomats said on condition of anonymity. Greece has been buying oil from Iran on credit and earns desperately needed money by refining crude for Balkan neighbors, they said. Italy has arranged for Iranian oil in payment for loans granted by Rome in the past.

January 23, 2012 South Korea and beef.  South Korea has dropped its ban on importations of Canadian beef after almost nine years, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz announced Friday.  It was the last country, among those that were significant importers of Canada beef, to end boycotts on the product that began after Canada had an initial documented case of mad cow disease in 2003. "This announcement is a big step forward for Canada's beef producers and processors," Ritz said at a news conference near Edmonton. Ritz said South Korea would now accept beef from Canadian cattle younger than 30 months, and that this new access could be worth as much as $30 million annually to the beef industry by 2015. Ritz added: "Canada has worked tirelessly - governments and industry together - to reopen this vital market based on the science fact that our beef is safe." On Dec. 30, Canadian officials said Seoul had ratified import health requirements for Canadian beef, but several steps remained. South Korea has now published the approval of those requirements and notified Ottawa that all certification conditions are in place, the Canadian government said. Canada complained about South Korea's beef ban to the World Trade Organization, but suspended its case last year after South Korea said it would resume trade by the end of 2011.

January 20, 2012 WTO.  Pakistan is expecting that Bangladesh most likely to withdraw its objections to a special European Union trade package for Islamabad in the upcoming meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Council for Trade in Goods to be held on February 1, it has learnt on Thursday. “We hope Bangladesh relents and removes its objections,” an official confided to The Nation on Thursday when contacted. Sources told TheNation that Pakistan has addressed the concerns of Bangladesh regarding European Union (EU) package for Islamabad, which was granted in 2010 after the devastating floods in Pakistan. The EU had announced a trade package for Pakistan in 2010 wherein Pakistan would enjoy two years unilateral tariff concession package proposed for about 75 items to be exported to EU. However this package was subject to the WTO wavier. It is to be noted that first India then Bangladesh had raised the concerns over the said trade package given to Pakistan. Later, India has withdrawn its opposition after Pakistan assuring it for granting Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to New Delhi in November last year but some other countries including Bangladesh opposed the concession. Sources on Thursday told on the condition of anonymity that Islamabad had addressed the concerns of the Dhaka and now we are expecting that WTO would approve the said package in the meeting to be held on February 1. It might be recalled here that on the objection of Bangladesh, European Union move to grant trade preferences, GSP plus status, to Pakistan as an aid measure following last year floods in Pakistan, has been halted. Bangladesh was worried about this decision, as they said Pakistan is a cotton growing country and has an extra advantage that would create an uneven competition, if EU provides trade benefit to Pakistan. World Trade Organisation rules say there should be no discrimination and all trade partners must be dealt at par.

January 19, 2012 Russia.  Russia will not abide by its World Trade Organization commitments with the U.S. unless Washington scraps a trade law that dates back to the Cold War, the foreign minister said Wednesday. The Jackson-Vanik law, which was passed in 1974 and denies Russia normal trade relations status, has been a political sticking point in the countries’ trade relations for years. The law was originally used to pressure the Soviet Union to allow emigration, primarily of Jews. U.S. presidents have granted Russia annual waivers to the law since 1994, so it hasn’t materially affected the country’s business interests since then. But Moscow has been growing impatient with U.S. promises to scrap what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described as a “Cold War relic.” Lavrov told a news conference that the U.S. must repeal the discriminatory law. “Russia will not abide by the commitments it undertook as a WTO member if the Jackson-Vanik amendment remains in force,” he said. American businessmen and the U.S. administration have long lobbied to have the law scrapped in Congress, but Republicans have opposed such a move for years, using it as a negotiation tool to advance other issues. Lavrov said the law is still in place because of “domestic American problems.”

January 18, 2012 China.  The EU on Tuesday called on China to adhere to a new agreement reached by members of the World Trade Organisation to further open up government procurement - a market worth hundreds of billions of euros. Foreign governments and firms have long complained China favours domestic companies and squeezes them out of the government's lucrative procurement market, although Beijing has abolished some measures seen as encouraging this. EU internal market commissioner Michel Barnier told reporters in Beijing that following on from the agreement reached in December, "the next priority is for China to adhere to it." Barnier, whose remit focuses on the European Union's single market as well as public procurement, is in China to meet senior officials including central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan and Finance Minister Xie Xuren. "We (now) have a much better framework (for the agreement). China must say whether it wants to adhere to the agreement as it is," he said. 
The agreement - signed in Geneva by 42 countries including EU nations, the United States, Japan and South Korea - forces them to open up new industries such as telecommunications to outside competition for public tenders. nder the deal - which Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have not signed - the overall public tender market open to international competition is now worth 600 billion euros ($767 billion), up from 500 billion euros. Government procurement represents 16 percent of demand in China and 19 percent in Europe, according to EU officials travelling with Barnier. The EU Chamber of Commerce in China has said the public procurement market in the world's second largest economy is worth $1 trillion a year - a lucrative area that foreign firms are still largely excluded from.

January 17, 2012 Vanuatu.  Vanuatu’s Acting Head of State Esmon Sai is set to approve the controversial protocol for Vanuatu to join the World Trade Organisation. According to the Daily Post, Mr Sai says he will sign the bill into law before the president, Iolu Abbil, returns to port Vila. Mr Abbil has been abroad for medical treatment and the first Deputy Speaker; Dunstan Hilton, also left the country to attend the Commonwealth Speakers Conference in Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago. Mr Sai, who holds the position of Second Deputy Speaker, said he would sign the Bill before the Head of State returns. Before leaving for Australia, Mr Abbil reportedly sought private legal advice on the bill. The move to join the WTO has been resisted by non-government groups and the churches.

January 16, 2012 U.S. honors Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 13, 2012 Russia.  Russia is likely to have a fiscal surplus in 2012 although the planned budget deficit is 1.5% GDP. Analysts say the budget surplus along with low state debts and joining the WTO could contribute to an upgrade of Russia’s credit rating. “Russian surplus in 2011 is a symbol of the strength of Russian balance sheet, in fact, it’s one of the best in the world”, says Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief economist of Deutsche Bank. “Apart from the fact, that Russia’s state debt, public external debt and domestic debt is very low, you also have the dynamic factor of the flow of fiscal deficits being subdued and actually showing surplus”, he explains. According to Finance Minister Anton Siluanov , the fiscal surplus of Russia’s budget in 2011 is about 0.8% GDP or 427 billion roubles or $13.416 billion. It is the first fiscal surplus since 2008. Despite the financial challenges of 2011, Russia has become the third fastest growing economy in the world after China and India. The latest economic data, revealed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, showed 4.2 percent added to the country’s GDP last year. Meanwhile industrial production rose 4.7 percent, the forth best result in the world. "And then you compare it with other countries in the world and see that a lot of developed countries show close to double digit deficits in terms of the share of deficit in GDP”, said Mr Lissovlik.  Mr Lissovlik considers a fiscal surplus in 2012 possible if oil prices rise to $150 as some have predicted. “Current projections suggests something like a balanced budget or even surplus”, he suggests. “The Government assumes 1.5%GDP fiscal deficit, but this is predicted on an oil price that is close to $100. Unfortunately, the oil price is out of Russia’s control, but as we’ve seen in 2011 there can be something that could be done by the government in terms of controlling fiscal spending”. Analysts think a budget surplus could also improve Russia’s image as an investment destination. But a long history of economic and political instability along with high dependency on oil keeps rating agencies from improving Russia’s credit rating. 

January 12, 2012  Canadian renewable power.  The European Union has escalated a trade dispute over Canadian provincial rules for solar and wind energy subsidies by asking the World Trade Organization to set up a panel to rule on the case, the WTO said on Wednesday. The EU's decision to resort to legal measures against Canada, after the failure of direct talks to settle the dispute, will come as little surprise because Japan has already trodden the same path in an identical case. The EU and Japan say the Canadian province of Ontario is illegally restricting trade by giving an subsidy to local producers of renewable energy equipment and services. The scheme guarantees above-market energy prices for renewable power that uses a certain amount of Canadian-made equipment or services, a provision that the complainants say is against the WTO's rules. The EU says Ontario's scheme demands solar projects must have 40 percent of their initial development made up of local products and services, while wind energy needs 25 percent. The EU has put the request for a dispute panel on the agenda of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body when it meets on Friday January 20, six months after a panel was set up to adjudicate on Japan's complaint against Canada. 

January 11, 2012  Ukraine.  The Ukrainian government is deciding whether to initiate talks with the World Trade Organization (WTO) on increasing rates of duty on goods imported to Ukraine from a list formed according to proposals from Ukrainian business, Government Commissioner for Ukraine's European Integration Valeriy Piatnytsky has said. "A list of the goods has been created, and it includes cars, sugar and certain types of meat," he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on January 6, 2012. Piatnytsky said that the government is also studying the application of other measures to protect national goods producers, as the option of the revision of tariffs with the WTO could be ineffective. He said that most cars imported to Ukraine come from Russia, with which Kyiv has an agreement on free trade, and via the European Union, with which a free trade agreement has been prepared for signing. He added that Ukraine has launched an investigation into imports of the two most popular types of cars – cars with engines up to 1,600 cubic centimeters and with engines up to 2,200 cubic centimeters. "If the restrictive measures were not approved after investigations, what need would we have for talks [with the WTO countries]?" he said. He added that a 50% duty is in effect for imported sugar, and the revision of the tariff quota of over 260,000 tonnes or 10-15% of annual consumption is unlikely. Piatnytsky said that other WTO countries would demand something from Ukraine for agreement to increase imported duties if the tariffs were revised. 

January 10, 2012  WTO and COOL.  The World Trade Organization said last week that it has extended until March 23 the deadline for appeals of its country-of-origin labeling (COOL) decision. Responding to complaints filed by Canada and Mexico, a WTO dispute panel on Nov. 18 concluded that U.S. COOL violates several provisions of international trade rules because it affords imported livestock less favorable treatment than domestic livestock. U.S. meat and poultry producers could face retaliatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico if Congress fails to correct the COOL law to comply with WTO obligations. The United States is expected to appeal the WTO decision.

January 9, 2012  WTO and Euros.  Russia says it is ready to commit more than 10 billion US dollars to the IMF to help support the struggling eurozone economy. President Dmitry Medvedev made the pledge in Brussels during the biannual EU-Russia summit. He said, "In summary, it is only Europe that can help itself, but other countries should also create the conditions for Europe to free itself of the crisis as quickly as possible, so that it develops out of the crisis dead end, and we will help to enable this." Medvedev says 41 percent of Russia's currency reserves are invested in euros, and that Russia is interested in seeing the EU preserved as a powerful economic and political force. Meanwhile, EU President Herman Van Rompuy acknowledges that Russia and the EU "are strongly inter-dependent."

"The EU wants to be Russia's partner in its modernization. We are indeed strategic partners. In many ways we are strongly interdependent in a spirit of mutual benefit. We can only win by deepening our cooperation even further", said Rompuy. On Friday, the WTO is set to approve Russia as a member. The country has been trying to join the trade body for the past 18 years. EU Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso has sent his congratulations. "After 18 years of negotiation this is a major achievement, indeed it opens new opportunities for trade, and for development of our bilateral economic relations which are already strong", said Barroso. Meanwhile, Russia and the EU have also agreed on moves towards visa-free travel. Advances depend on the implementation of a number of "common steps", such as introducing biometric passports and preventing illegal migration.

January 6, 2012  COOL.  U.S. laws on mandatory country-of-origin labelling (COOL) have not only led to a substantial drop in U.S.-bound Canadian cattle exports, but helped widen the price gap between Canadian and U.S. marketings, Canadian research shows. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association, in the wake of the November 2011 ruling against COOL by a dispute settlement panel at the World Trade Organization (WTO), says its research shows COOL held far more "substantial influence" than just a requirement for stickers at the meat counter. The CCA warned it has so far "resisted" going public with any dollar-value assessment of COOL's impact, as such costs "may well become a point of arbitration" if Washington refuses to bring COOL in line with the WTO panel's ruling. Specific data on costs would then help form the basis of any new or higher tariffs the WTO would allow Canada to slap on exports from the U.S., equal to the negative impact of COOL, the CCA said in a newsletter this week. However, the CCA said, it can show the "change in proportion" of Canadian feeder cattle in U.S. cattle-on-feed placements.  
Overall, the CCA logged a loss of U.S. imports of Canadian feeder cattle of about 480,000 head in the first 80 weeks after the COOL measure came into effect at the end of September 2008. That works out to an estimated reduction of 6,000 head per week, which the CCA said is "substantial" compared to Canada's average weekly feeder cattle exports to the U.S. before COOL came in: specifically, 10,494 head per week in 2007 and 8,372 head in 2006.

January 5, 2012  India.  From January 1st, all airlines using the EU airspace will need to pay a carbon tax if the emissions exceed a certain cap. This move will impact Indian carriers that use EU airspace and airports, reports Rituparna Bhuyan of CNNBC-TV18. Sources have told the channel that India will be using a multi-pronged strategy to challenge the tax known as EU emission trading system or ETS. India is reportedly going to team up with US, Canada, Japan and many other countries to challenge ETS. The first strategy will be to challenge it at the WTO because India believes that ETS is a violation of the National Treatment Norms set up by the WTO. This stems from the fact that the tax charged is not only on the airlines that uses the EU airspace, but also on the route taken to reach the EU airspace. ETS is likely to be challenged at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change because the convention has not taken any decision on aviation emissions. ETS will also be challenged at the International Civil Aviation Organization because it is at the moment negotiating a global treaty on aviation emissions, but it has not taken any final view on it. Lastly, India is going to take up this matter bilaterally with all EU-based countries. In fact, CNBC-TV18 has learnt that Civil Aviation Ministry has started calling up many EU-based airline companies to take up this issue with them at a one-to-one level.

January 4, 2012  Egypt.  Egypt will maintain its budget deficit at 8.6 percent of output for this financial year, its finance minister said on Tuesday, as another minister was quoted as saying a visit from the IMF planned for January would be delayed for a few weeks. Finance Minister Mumtaz al-Saeed said Egypt would maintain its budget deficit at LE134 billion (US$22.22 billion), or 8.6 percent of gross domestic product, in the financial year ending in June. A senior army official had said in early December that Egypt's deficit would climb to 167 billion pounds in 2011/12, roughly equivalent to 11 percent of GDP. A state newspaper reported on Sunday that the government plans to raise natural gas and electricity prices paid by heavy industries by 33 percent this month to help cap the deficit. Saeed said it will also review custom duties to help narrow the deficit, without "contravening Egypt's signed agreement with the World Trade Organization." The WTO exists to support freer world trade. An expected visit by the International Monetary Fund to Egypt this month to discuss the country's economic problems has been delayed for "a few weeks," independent daily Al-Shorouk cited a government minister as saying on Tuesday. Egypt, whose economy was battered by the uprising that unseated Hosni Mubarak in February, turned down a $3 billion IMF facility in June last year, saying it did not need the funds. The ruling military generals have also been reluctant to take on debt without a popular mandate.

January 3, 2012  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

December 30, 2011 Mercosur.  The four member countries, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay of MERCOSUR (Common Market of the South) have agreed to increase import tariffs to 35 percent, the maximum allowed under WTO rules, on 100 industrial products until December of 2014 to protect domestic industries. Their manufacturing companies have been under import pressures from Asian competitors and that is expected to intensify with slower import growth in EU and U.S. markets. This action reflects the history of MERCOSUR and the imbalances now faced in world markets. MERCOSUR was founded in 1991 as an economic and political agreement to promote the free movement of goods, people and currency among the four countries. It is now a customs union with common external tariffs and freer internal trade. The four members have a GDP of $2.9 trillion in 2011, 4.5 percent of world GDP. Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador and Peru are associate members, with Ecuador actively seeking full membership. Venezuela signed a membership agreement in 2006, but expansion requires the approval of parliaments of each member and Paraguay’s Parliament refuses to grant approval. Internal squabbles have occurred. Argentina and Brazil applied non-automatic import licenses on a range of each other’s goods earlier this year. Uruguayan businesses have complained that Argentina is blocking their imports. Paraguay, 6.5 million people, and Uruguay, 3.3 million people, generally support removal of tariffs and other restrictions on trade for their small economies since they use many industrial products that cannot be supplied by their domestic industries. Chemicals, capital goods and textiles are expected to be among the products charged the higher tariffs. Uruguay’s trade lately has been at odds with the latest tariff action because China is its second largest trading partner after Brazil.
The four countries have a history of government management of industries, with tariffs as part of the management effort. This latest move on tariffs leaves the impression of support for a policy of self-sufficiency within MERCOSUR. That is the direct opposite of the comparative advantage basis for freer trade.

December 29, 2011 Brazil.  The Government of Brazil will soon replace the existing rule for levying tariff on import of textiles into the country. Currently, Brazil imposes duty on textile imports on a price-based mechanism. This will be replaced with imposing duty on per item system, Finance Minister Guido Mantega said. While receiving an award from the Brazilian textile industry in Sao Paulo, the Minister said the new tariff system would be implemented within a span of three months. It would help safeguard the interests of domestic manufacturers who are facing tough times due to price dumping by overseas exporters, he added. He informed that Brazil would soon inform the World Trade Organization (WTO) of its intention to alter its tariff regulation system, and would request it to continue with the new system for 10 years. He added that such a measure is necessary to protect Brazil’s industries from the impact of weak dollar and international competition. 

December 28, 2011 China and Russia.  Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) will serve as a considerable spur to China-Russia cooperation in trade and investment, a Chinese diplomat said. In a recent interview with Xinhua, Ling Ji, minister counselor for economic and commercial affairs at the Chinese embassy to Russia, said Russia's accession into the WTO will create new opportunities for both China and Russia. "On one hand, Russia opens its market; on the other hand, Russia enjoys more rights to access other markets," Ling said. After 18 years of negotiation, the world's biggest economy outside the WTO and the only G20 member left out finally joined the trade bloc on Dec16. After its accession, Russia's customs tariffs will be lowered to 7.8 percent from 10 percent, Ling said. The country will also cut down import duties on one-third of its imports, making it easier for Chinese industrial and agricultural products to access the Russian market, Ling said. The diplomat noted that future expansion of bilateral trade fueled by lower tariffs is only one aspect of the benefits of Russia's WTO accession, as Russia will also improve its trade and investment climate.

December 27, 2011 Japan.  Japan has been advancing a series of trade talks recently to hammer out bilateral or regional free-trade agreements because it sees high-level economic partnerships as the key to revitalizing its stagnant economy. While announcing last month its plan to join multilateral talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a U.S.-led free-trade initiative, this month Japan concluded a joint study with China and South Korea on the possibility of signing a tripartite free-trade accord and resumed FTA negotiations with Australia. Japan is also looking to conclude preparatory talks with the European Union for a future FTA. These developments come as the 153-member World Trade Organization officially admitted in its latest ministerial meeting that concluding the 10-year-old Doha Round of trade liberalization talks is unlikely in the near future, highlighting the difficulty of forming a global trade deal. "With no fundamental measures to conclude the Doha Round in sight . . . there is little choice but to seek bilateral FTAs, given their flexibility in treating sensitive items and the speed (of the negotiations)," said Junichi Sugawara, a trade policy expert at Mizuho Research Institute. In particular, Japan's trade talks with Australia, which is already involved in the TTP process, should be worth watching because they could become a "touchstone" for Japan's future in the TPP talks when it joins, Sugawara said. The bilateral session with Australia was Japan's first official trade negotiations with a country involved in the TPP since Tokyo announced in November that it would participate in the multilateral process, which also involves the United States, Singapore and New Zealand.

December 26, 2011 Merry Christmas! 

December 23, 2011 Airbus case.  The World Trade Organization launched an arbitration process on Thursday to examine a US claim for up to $10 billion of sanctions against the European Union in a dispute over subsidies for Airbus planes.  The arbitration process is the latest step in the world's biggest trade dispute, which has dissolved into an increasingly complex legal battle between the United States and the EU on behalf of aircraft giants Boeing and Airbus.  Although the arbitration process has been triggered, nothing may happen until the two sides have exhausted other legal avenues.  Many trade experts expect the two sides, which each accuse the other of unfairly supporting its own plane maker, to attempt to negotiate a settlement as the legal appeals and counter-appeals become more and more entangled.  In the latest round of the dispute, the WTO told the EU to stop all illegal subsidies for Airbus by Dec. 1. The EU claimed to have done so but the United States said it had not.  The US side said on Dec. 9 that it wanted to impose sanctions of $7-10 billion annually on the EU, a sum it said represented the value of lost exports of US large civil aircraft because of illegal EU subsidies for Airbus.  The EU then challenged both the level and calculation of the sanctions, triggering the arbitration process. 

December 22, 2011 EU ETS and WTO. With economies in the U.S. and Western Europe exhibiting either painfully slow growth or no growth at all, both the World Bank and the WTO have cautioned recently that protectionist sentiment is creeping into economic policies. Two issues came to a head this month, each raising the threat of trade sanctions flying across the Atlantic. 

First is the ongoing dispute over subsidies to commercial aircraft makers, which the US and Europe have fought out in two separate cases in the World Trade Organization (WTO) for more than half a decade. This came to a head with the WTO’s ruling earlier this year. The second, and at the moment more politically volatile, is the European Union's contentious decision to include aviation under its Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

December 21, 2011 Canada and India.  The Indo-Canadian business community was last week given an update on the third round of Canada-India free trade talks, held in New Delhi Dec 13-16. Both Ed Fast, Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, and Bal Gosal, Minister of State (Sport), welcomed the talks, noting they would benefit Canadian businesses, workers and their families. 
Gosal highlighted the progress being made in an update to the Indo-Canadian community in Brampton. "A Canada-India trade agreement has the potential to boost Canada's economy and create jobs and economic prosperity for hard-working Canadians," said Gosal. "Our government is committed to building on our already strong ties with India to create a partnership that will lead to new opportunities and stronger economies in both countries." In a statement issued from Geneva, where he was attending the Eighth World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference, Fast said: "Canada is aiming to conclude negotiations in 2013." Canada and India hope to tripe bilateral trade to $15 billion annually by 2015. A Canada-India Joint Study Report concluded free trade could boost Canada's economy by at least $6 billion, increase bilateral trade with India 50 per cent and directly benefit Canadian businesses and workers in sectors ranging from primary agricultural, resource-related and chemical products to transport equipment, machinery and equipment, and services. Over the last five years, Canada has concluded new trade agreements with nine countries and is holding ongoing negotiations with close to 50 others. This includes current free trade negotiations with the European Union.  

December 20, 2011 WTO.  World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General Lamy urged WTO members to pledge to work to salvage the faltering Doha Development Round of trade talks and ensure the multi-lateral trading system does not become irrelevant. Lamy spoke during the opening of the WTO's biennial ministerial conference in Geneva.He said WTO members must address the primary question causing the impasse in the negotiations, specifically what contribution major emerging markets (China, India and Brazil) should make towards the further opening of global markets. Efforts to re-start the Doha negotiations earlier this year following the collapse of the talks in July 2008 were unsuccessful in part because the United States insisted that Brazil, China and India increase access for goods and services. This effort was followed by an unsuccessful attempt to secure a “deliverables” package in favor of least developed countries (LDCs) for the December ministerial. That package would have included concessions on cotton. The United States refused to include a commitment to 100 percent duty-free/quota free market access for exports from LDCs without additional initiatives that would benefit developed and developing country exporters.

December 19, 2011  China and US.  U.S.-China trade tensions are starting to heat up, an especially ominous development as global export growth is slowing and both countries face significant political showdowns at home next year. China fired the latest salvo last week by imposing duties as high as 22 percent on imports of large cars and sport-utility vehicles from the United States for the next two years. Beijing alleged dumping and improper U.S. government subsidies, the same charges that Washington has made about Chinese exports of solar panels to the U.S. The practical effect of the Chinese tariffs is minor: U.S. shipments of motor vehicles to China last year totaled just $3.5 billion -- nearly 4 percent of American exports to China and less than 0.3 percent of all U.S. exports. The new tariff is in addition to an existing 25 percent duty on imported vehicles in China, so the new levy probably won't make much difference to Chinese buyers, analysts said. Nonetheless, American shipments of SUVs and other cars to China represent one of the fastest-growing export segments and among the most politically sensitive. Analysts worry that the Chinese action will add fuel to already rising tensions between the two countries. The Obama administration has been stepping up its legal challenges to Chinese trade practices, most recently saying it plans to ask the World Trade Organization next week to look into Chinese restrictions on imports of American broiler chickens. This month is the 10th anniversary of China's membership in the WTO.

December 16, 2011  Taiwan and Laos.  Taiwan and Laos concluded a bilateral trade agreement under the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Wednesday to pave the way for the Southeastern country to enter the world trade regulatory body.  The agreement was signed by Bill Cho, director-general of Taiwan's Bureau of Foreign Trade, and Khemmani Pholsena, Laos' deputy commerce and industry minister, on the sidelines of the eighth WTO ministerial conference slated to open in Geneva Thursday.  Taiwan and Laos had engaged in seven rounds of talks on the bilateral pact and completed the process in the Laotian capital of Vientiane in May, under efforts to further bolster commercial exchanges between the two countries.  Laos, which has not yet been admitted as a signatory nation to the 153-member WTO, has also signed similar bilateral trade agreements with Japan, China, South Korea, Canada and Australia.  Two-way trade between Taiwan and Laos totaled US$10.91 million in 2010 and Taiwanese companies have invested a combined total of US$18 million in Laos.

December 15, 2011  Climate.  A UN climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement Sunday on a complex and far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change for the coming decades. The 194-party conference agreed to start negotiations on a new accord that would put all countries under the same legal regime enforcing commitments to control greenhouse gases. It would take effect by 2020 at the latest. The deal also set up the bodies that will collect, govern and distribute tens of billions of dollars a year for poor countries. Other documents in the package lay out rules for monitoring and verifying emissions reductions, protecting forests, transferring clean technologies to developing countries and scores of technical issues. Currently, only industrial countries have legally binding emissions targets under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Those commitments expire next year, but they will be extended for another five years under the accord adopted Sunday. The proposed Durban Platform offered answers to problems that have bedeviled global warming negotiations for years about sharing the responsibility for controlling carbon emissions and helping the world's poorest and most climate-vulnerable nations cope with changing forces of nature.

December 14, 2011  Taiwan and Russia.  With Russia on the verge of ending its 18-year wait to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), a top Taiwanese foreign trade official said Tuesday that the entry of the US$1.9 trillion economy may benefit Taiwan's information and telecom industry. Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) Director-General Bill Cho said Russia is expected to formally join the 153-member organization, which requires a transparent trade regime and lower tariffs that may help Taiwan further expand in the emerging market, he said. After gaining approval, Russia's tariffs are expected to begin lowering from Jan. 1, and within 2-3 years the average tariff will be decreased to 7.1 percent, with tariffs on agricultural imports being cut to 11.3 percent and industrial products to 6.4 percent, Cho said. In 2008-2010, average tariff in Russia was 10.3 percent, with tariffs on farm and industrial products at 15.6 percent and 9.4 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, Russia has agreed to join the Information Technology Agreement three years after it enters the WTO, which he said would especially benefit Taiwan's telecom and information industry as tariffs on related products are expected to drop to zero. According to BOFT statistics, Taiwan shipped US$1.08 billion worth of goods to Russia in 2010, up 85.8 percent year-on-year. Taiwan's major export products to Russia included hard drives, flat panels, information components and parts and steel screws. 

December 13, 2011  Australia and Vietnam.  Trade Minister Craig Emerson today travels to Hanoi, where he will co-chair the 10th Australia-Vietnam Joint Trade and Economic Cooperation Committee (JTECC) meetings and address local and Australian business people.  This is Dr Emerson's first visit to the country as Trade Minister, and comes at a time of closer integration between Australia and the Asian region, in the Asian Century.  The JTECC provides a forum for talks on tightening trade links between the two countries, as well as for promoting the broader global free trade agenda. The last meeting was held in Melbourne in July last year.  Vietnam is one of a core group of countries in the Asian region identified by Dr Emerson for their dynamic growth, rigorous domestic reform programs, burgeoning middle classes, and developing demand for Australian goods and services.  Australia's relationship with Vietnam is thriving under the countries' Comprehensive Partnership, signed in 2009.  Two-way trade was worth more than $6 billion in 2010-11, having grown at an average of 10 per cent a year over the last decade.  Vietnam's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2007, its membership of the Asean-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement and its interest in further economic co-operation reflected policy drives aimed at improved regional engagement and domestic reform, Dr Emerson said.  “Vietnam's economy is fast growing and its regional and international stature on the rise,” Dr Emerson said.  “It is a good friend and robust trading partner whose economic potential is exciting for Australian goods and services exporters,” he said. While in Hanoi, Dr Emerson is scheduled to hold a series of meetings on the sidelines of the JTECC event, including with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.  He will also address members of the Australia-Vietnam Chamber of Commerce, on trade and economic reform.

December 12, 2011  Airbus.  Airbus hit back on Friday at a U.S. decision to press for sanctions in its spat with the European Union over aircraft subsidies and said it had complied with a trade body's findings. The European planemaker responded after Washington rejected the EU's plan to comply with a World Trade Organization ruling on support and said it would request authorization to impose potentially billions of dollars annually in trade sanctions. Airbus Head of Public Affairs Rainer Ohler said the United States had made a number of unfounded claims and requests since the start of the long-running dispute which involves mutual claims of unfair aid for Airbus and U.S. rival Boeing (BA.N). "Calling for sanctions is just another one of those empty claims. We believe its time for the WTO to review and assess the implementation presented by the EU," Ohler said in an email. "Airbus is confident it has fully addressed WTO demands in a comprehensive manner." Boeing said in a statement that Airbus could not comply with the WTO's findings as long as it ignored any non-commercial launch aid it is receiving for its next airplane, the A350. "Despite the very clear WTO ruling, EADS/Airbus and European governments have failed to remove outstanding subsidies. This illegal subsidization of Airbus products - plane after plane - is unsustainable and must stop now," Boeing said.

December 9, 2011  US and China.  The United States will not stand idly by while China appears to have misused its trade remedy laws and put American jobs at risk," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement just a few days before the tenth anniversary of China's accession to the WTO. It is the 12th case the United States has filed against China since Beijing entered the world trade body on Dec 11, 2001. It comes as President Barack Obama has faced some criticism on both the right and the left for not taking a tougher line with China on trade. China imposed the duties, ranging from about 55 percent to 135 percent, on U.S. chicken "broiler products" in August and September 2010, claiming they were subsidized and "dumped" in the Chinese market at less than fair value. Beijing began the investigation that led to the duties on September 27, 2009 - just a few weeks after U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to slap an emergency 35 percent tariff on Chinese-made tires to stop a market-disrupting surge. The duties were also seen as tit-for-tat retaliation for a U.S. congressional ban on cooked chicken from China. The United States was the largest exporter of broiler products to China before the duties were imposed. Since then, U.S. broiler product exports to China have fallen by nearly 90 percent, the U.S. trade office said.

December 8, 2011  COOL.  The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) issued the following statement today from Regulatory Counsel Erik Lieberman regarding the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Panel Report on the Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) law:  “The World Trade Organization (WTO) recognized what the supermarket industry has known all along—that COOL is a protectionist law designed to make it more costly and difficult for retailers to sell imported foods. COOL has forced the industry to spend tens millions of dollars each year on unnecessary regulatory burdens all for little or no benefit to consumers. We fully agree with the conclusion of the panel that the COOL law fails to provide information in a meaningful way. “This year, COOL enforcement has become more burdensome than ever, making it challenging for retailers to carry imported meats, produce and seafood. Although the compliance rate for the program last year was 97 percent, this year, inspectors are demanding that more redundant records be maintained—at great cost to grocers. “The COOL law will need to be repealed or rewritten in order for the U.S. to meet its obligations to global trading partners. We look forward to working with Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop an alternative system; one that will provide useful information to consumers and put our nation in compliance with international trade agreements."

December 7, 2011 WTO.  China and Russia's entry into the WTO (World Trade Organization), the most important events in the past decade of the organization, is now attracting the world's renewed attention to the world trade body, especially during the times of debate about regionalism and globalization. Recalling China's accession to the WTO in 2001 after 15 long years of negotiations, Sundram Pushpanathan, Deputy Secretary- General of ASEAN for ASEAN Economic Community, said that China's accession to the WTO could be regarded as a "fitting cap" to the program of economic reforms that China started to implement in 1978. "Opening up the Chinese market for trade and investment, and subsequently allowing its trade regime to be subjected to multilateral rules and disciplines, have resulted in a more dynamic, more vibrant China's economy," Pushpanathan said in a recent interview with Xinhua. According to ADB's statistics, China's growth rate of real GDP per capita has been steadily on the rise since it acceded to the WTO, soaring from 7.5 percent in 2001 to 13.6 percent in 2007. China is recovering from the latest global financial crisis with a 9.9 percent growth rate in 2010. 

December 6, 2011  COOL.  The World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in favor of Canada and Mexico in a complaint against the U.S. mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) law, which took effect in 2008. Following the law's implementation, U.S. imports of Canadian cattle and hogs and Mexican cattle declined substantially.  The complainants had argued that the COOL law is inconsistent with the United States' obligations under several articles of the WTO agreement. In its findings, the panel noted that the U.S. law violated WTO rules on several fronts and wrote specifically that "The COOL measure, particularly in regard to the muscle cut meat labels, violates Article 2.1 because it affords imported livestock treatment less favorable than that accorded to like domestic livestock."

December 5, 2011  WTO.  World trade Organisation (WTO) Director General Pascal Lamy reported to its General Council last Wednesday that the Doha trade negotiations would continue in the year 2012. In other words, the conclusion of the negotiations promised at the beginning of the year, failed to materialise. Instead the Director General was only calling for ‘advancing negotiations in areas where progress can be achieved’. Taking into consideration the uncertain global political and economic climate and the impending presidential elections in the United States in 2012, it is now highly unlikely that an agreement could be reached before 2013 at least. It was ten years ago, on November 14, 2001 that the WTO decided to start the Doha round of trade negotiations, commonly called the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). It was so named since the Doha Declaration issued by the WTO Ministerial Conference recognised the development needs of developing countries and called for assisting them to get better trade access. “We seek to place their needs and interests at heart of the Work Program”, said the Declaration. This was a sequel to the Seattle protest earlier which showed that the WTO is biased against developing countries. The DDA consists of 19 issues including implementation issues, Agriculture, Investment, TRIPs, Trade facilitation, Environment, Technology transfer, Least Developed Countries (LDCs) among others. Most contentious among them are Agriculture, Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA), Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBS), Dispute Resolution, Environment and special treatment for developing countries.

December 2, 2011  Airbus ruling.  The European Union said Thursday it has complied with a World Trade Organization ruling that called for an end to unfair government aid to aircraft maker Airbus. U.S. trade officials and rival Boeing Inc. responded that they would study closely the EU's submission to ensure all illegal subsidies had been removed. "We have presented a comprehensive package of actions that achieves full compliance with the WTO recommendations and rulings in the Airbus case," said John Clancy, a spokesman for the EU's trade office. "Through this package we address all categories of subsidies, all forms of adverse effects, and all models of Airbus aircraft covered by the WTO rulings," Clancy said. He declined to offer further details on how exactly the EU intends to comply with the panel ruling. The Geneva-based WTO had given the EU until Dec. 1 to comply with a WTO appeals body decision in May, which found Airbus received state subsidies that hurt Boeing. The disputed subsidies, which Washington claims amounted to $18 billion over several decades, are part of a long-running trans-Atlantic trade spat. The European Union has in turn brought a case against the United States over aid to Boeing that a WTO appeals panel is expected to rule on early next year.

December 1, 2011  African Union.  The African Union (AU) with financial support from the African Caribbean Pacific Multilateral Trade System (ACP MTS) Programme of the European Union (EU) held a preparatory meeting from Sunday November 27 to Monday November 28, 2011 at La Palm Royal Beach Hotel in Accra. The objective of the meeting was to facilitate the preparations and participation of AU countries for the Eighth World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference (MC8) scheduled for Geneva, Switzerland, from December 15 to December 17, 2011.
Participants included representatives from AU Commission, AU Trade Ministries and agencies involved in trade policy negotiations and implementations, AU and EU delegates from Geneva, the private sector, civil society, and other stakeholders involved in multilateral trade issues. 
A statement signed by Mrs Monica Bleboo, General Co-ordinator of the AU programme and released to the Ghana News Agency on Tuesday, said the meeting also provided opportunities for delegates to discuss existing contentious issues within the Doha Round that impacted on African trade and to coordinate positions of the members of the AU on common texts on those issues. It indicated that the major outcome of the Workshop was the creation of an appropriate awareness on the major issues to be discussed at the Eighth WTO Ministerial Conference. “Thus the workshop also served as a forum for the exchange of views on the items and issues that will be discussed and deliberated upon during the impending Ministerial Conference,” it stated. The ACP MTS Programme is an EU financed programme that gives a response to the need to actively involve ACP countries in the multilateral trading system, enhance their national development and support their international integration. It was specifically designed to provide tutoring activities aimed at creating and/or consolidating negotiation capacities able to ensure all countries, equal benefit from WTO policies and rules.

November 30, 2011  Germany.  Germany will raise the concern of Bangladesh about a proposed EU duty waiver to Pakistan at the next World Trade Organisation meeting in Brussels, said the leader of a delegation with visiting German President Christian Wulff. Karl-Ernst Brauner, director of the Department of Foreign Trade Policy of Germany's Ministry of Economics and Technology, said he will discuss the issue as Bangladesh has already cleared its position regarding the proposed duty waiver at a recent WTO meeting. “I will raise the issue at the meeting. But, I have not made up my mind yet in this regard,” Brauner said after a meeting with Commerce Minister Faruk Khan at his secretariat. Brauner led the delegation at the meeting. Pakistan sought the EU duty-waiver for its 75 products, mainly textile and readymade garment items, as the country faced devastating floods last year.  But Bangladesh urged the WTO to impose a cap on export of eight Pakistani garment items as both the countries are strong in the eight items.  Brauner said German businessmen are interested to invest in the garment and textile and shipbuilding sectors of Bangladesh. Bangladesh's exports to Germany will continue to rise in future as the demand for clothing items is robust in Germany, he said. After the meeting, Saiful Islam, president of Bangladesh German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said Germany's Multiline Textil GmbH will soon invest around 100 million euros in Bangladesh. 

November 29, 2011  Russia WTO.  Russian Federation is soon to get the membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and this is likely to help EU apparel retailers to set up shops in Russia. With the Working Party on the Accession of the Russian Federation to the WTO adopting the accession package on 10 November 2011, Russia is now a step closer to acquiring the membership. The WTO Ministerial Conference to be held from 15 - 17 December, 2011 in Geneva, Switzerland is expected to approve the documents and formally accept Russia as a WTO Member. Speaking on the subject with fibre2fashion, a senior official at EuroCommerce, said, “Russia’s accession to the WTO would make it easier for EU apparel retailers to launch outlets in Russia.” “Post-accession, both Russia and the EU will be subject to the same set of rules that will be respected by both nations. This will bring more stability in the market,” according to Mr. Ralph Kamphöner, senior international trade advisor at EuroCommerce, which represents the retail, wholesale and international trade sectors in Europe. Elaborating further, he stated, “Apart from the fact that those who want to open retail outlets will be able to do so based on general agreement on certain services, it will also establish disciplines for traders and so they will also be under much more stable legal framework.” He further emphasized, “It would be important for the European retailers to enter the Russian market and get their domestic people in the Russian market as well.” 

November 28, 2011  China.  China’s ministry of commerce announced on Friday that it had opened an investigation into whether American subsidies and other policies in the solar, wind and hydroelectric sectors had unfairly hurt the industrial development of China’s renewable energy industries. The announcement comes two weeks after the United States Department of Commerce said that it had accepted a request by SolarWorld Industries America and six other companies in the United States for an investigation into whether Chinese solar panel manufacturers had obtained export subsidies from the Chinese government, or had dumped solar panels in the United States for less than it cost to manufacture and distribute them. The Chinese ministry said in a statement on its Web site that its investigation would end by May 25. That could allow the ministry to retaliate if the Commerce Department imposed punitive tariffs on shipments as part of either its antidumping investigation, for which a decision is due by mid-March, or as part of the antisubsidy investigation, for which a decision is due by mid-May. 

November 25, 2011 US celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday and "Black Friday" today.

November 24, 2011 Canada and Mexico.  The US’ country-of-origin labelling (COOL) requirements for livestock and meat exports have been deemed WTO illegal, according to a ruling issued on Friday 18 November (DS384, 386). The three-member panel found that the label, which was challenged by both Canada and Mexico at the global trade body in 2008, was too trade restrictive, in addition to discriminating on the basis of nationality. The panel, however, did not dismiss the right to label the origin of food; the experts only found fault with this particular US practice. Origin labels thus continue to be a lawful policy instrument under WTO rules. The ruling marks the third time this year that a panel has dismissed the US implementation of a consumer protection policy, with all rulings calling for stronger protection and/or more consumer information. In all three cases, the dispute panels recognised the US’ right to pursue the objective behind these policies. The problem was instead with the US’ implementation of these measures, either for not reaching far enough, thereby being misleading or unable to achieve the objective, and/or by being discriminatory. Beef and pork producers in Canada and Mexico and the meat processing industry in the US applauded the ruling, hoping that it would ease the economic situation of the highly integrated North American meat market. The decision was equally welcomed by the Canadian government, with Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz calling it “a clear win for our industry.” A statement from the Mexican Economy Ministry similarly called the ruling an “important victory.” The US, on the other hand, has already indicated an interest in an appeal. “Although the panel disagreed with the specifics of how the United States designed those [labelling] requirements, we remain committed to providing consumers with accurate and relevant information with respect to the origin of meat products that they buy at the retail level,” said Andrea Mead, Press Secretary for the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR). 

November 23, 2011 Trade Pact.  The private sector Transatlantic Business Dialogue wants Obama and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso to agree when the two leaders meet on Monday to explore the idea of negotiating a "TransAtlantic Economic and Trade Pact." The advisory group includes U.S. corporate giants General Electric, Coca-Cola and Microsoft as well as European heavyweights Airbus, Siemens and ThyssenKrupp. The business leaders also called on Obama and Barroso to tackle the "transatlantic debt crisis" with a plan to bring debts and deficits back to sustainable levels and to take a number of steps to promote innovation and green growth "Even though the president had a very successful trip to Asia and many of our member companies of course are invested in Asia ... the transatlantic relationship is where the money is," Kathryn Hauser, the group's U.S. executive director for business organization, told Reuters on Tuesday. Obama and leaders of eight other Asia Pacific economies announced this month in Honolulu they had agreed on the "broad outlines" of a deal to cut tariffs and other trade barriers and were committed to reaching a comprehensive final agreement. Japan, Mexico and Canada also expressed interest in joining the talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, which now include the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Peru and Chile. Obama then traveled to the East Asia Summit in Indonesia, where he underscored that the United States sees its future prosperity tied to the fast-growing Asia Pacific region. Still, the 27-nation European Union remains the United States' largest trade and investment partner. Together, they account for about half of world economic output and nearly one-third of world trade. Two-way trade is about $3.6 billion a day and transatlantic investment supports an estimated 7.1 million jobs, according to the U.S. Trade Representative's Office website.

November 22, 2011 Vanatu.  Campaigners against Vanuatu joining the World Trade Organisation say they will keep pressing their anti-WTO message in the community despite not being allowed to stage protests at the weekend. Parliament is due to debate ratifying Vanuatu’s WTO membership tomorrow. Authorities refused permission for the protests, planned by the Vanuatu Christian Council, the Malfatumauri National Council of Chiefs and civil society groups. One of the organisers, Pastor Alan Nafuki, says the protestors have been denied a democratic right but he says they’ll use other means to push their message that joining the WTO won’t bring any good to the country. “I call it devil is coming. This country has been declared (for) the second time, the happiest place on earth and if we are not careful about this then this could turn into something else. We’ve struggled to achieve the independence and integrity of this nation. We want to keep it that way.” Mr Nafuki says he will travel to Geneva next month to represent the views of Vanuatu’s chiefs, churches and civil society groups.