“Commercial Awareness Is Global.”
By: Ainsley Brown The European Union (EU) and Vietnam have now officially stated free trade talks after Karel De Gucht, the EU Trade Commissioner, met with the Vietnamese Prime Minister, Nguyen Tan Dung in Hanoi. The talks come after the successful conclusion of the 2 year in the making deal signed with South Korea in October of last year. This
By: Carsten Lexa Money helps a lot when it comes to exchanging goods. One buys the goods, pays with cash and takes the goods away. So far, so good. But what if free cash to spend is a rare thing? For example in times like today, when the economy is not doing well and money is scarce? Today, more and
By: Ainsley Brown Global trade was expected to drop as much as 10% in 2009; instead it fell by 12%. That extra two percent may not seem like much but it represents the largest drop in global commerce since 1945. This greater than expected drop has lead to renewed calls from Pascal Lamy, the Director General of the World Trade
By: Ainsley Brown In move that comes as no surprise, China has launched an official complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the European Union (EU) duties on imported Chinese shoes. And I saw this one coming a mile away; see my previous post on this issue. The duties were imposed in December of last year for a 15 month
By: Ainsley Brown In yet another sign of the increasing trade rift between Washington and Beijing, the Chinese have announced last Friday that they will impose duties on imported US chicken feet. Yes, I said chicken feet and not chicken. While many of my readers might find it unusual, perhaps even revolting, that someone would be eating chicken feet, the
By: Ainsley Brown Canada now joins a score of other nations, including Brazil, Japan, Norway, India and Turkey, as third parties in a World Trade Organization (WTO) panel on China’s export restrictions on certain raw materials. A WTO panel is the third step established under the Dispute Resolution Understanding (DSU) – the DSU being the lynchpin that transformed the General
By: Ainsley Brown The European Union (EU) voted this week to continue the anti-dumping duties it put on certain Chinese and Vietnamese footwear imported in the EU. In a previous post, I speculated that the EU would vote to discontinue the tariffs – boy was I ever wrong. And the EU’s decision has not gone unnoticed in the EU and
By: Ainsley Brown In what is clearly a sign of the continuing rise of tensions in global trade relations, China last week imposed duties US and Russian steel. The target of the duties is flat rolled steel used in the electric power sector. According to the Chinese the steel products were being dumped – that is being sold at below
By: Ainsley Brown The European Union (EU) last week rejected a plan that called for the extension of duties placed on Chinese and Vietnamese footwear. While a bit of a setback for Trade Commissioner, Baroness Ashton, the vote was far from a clear rebuke of her wishes to see the duties extended for a further 15 months. The Anti-dumping Committee
By: Ainsley Brown Could the longest running trade dispute in World Trade Organization (WTO) history be coming to an end? If newspaper reports are to be believed, and I have no reason to doubt them, then the 16 year old trade war could be very close to ending. At the center of this row is the Banana – yes the