“Commercial Awareness Is Global.”
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 It is now official the Banana Wars are now at an end. The protracted – 16 years – trade dispute over bananas between the European Union (EU), Latin American countries and the United States is now officially over. The Banana Wars, as they have come to be known even if somewhat inaccurately because while banana are the
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 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
By: Ainsley Brown There is nothing new with European Commission having to balance competing constituents – both market and geographic. The case remains the same with the anti-dumping duties put in place in 2006 to protect EU shoe manufacturers from cheaper Chinese and Vietnamese imports. The EU will decide tomorrow if it will continue or end the duties on the cheaper Chinese and Vietnamese
By: Ainsley Brown Is the aid given to Airbus by the governments of Germany, the UK and France in violation of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) subsidies agreement? The answer to this question is expected to be known by the parties today when the WTO is expected to hand down its confidential ruling to the parties. Confidential rulings are part
By: Ainsley Brown Anti-dumping investigations rose by more than 25% in 2008 over the previous year, says the World Trade Organization (WTO). The 2008 numbers, 208 in total, are to be contrasted with the peak of 366 in 2001 and the eleven year low of 2007 of only 163. It will be interesting to see what the numbers will be