Tag Archives: WTO

Automobiles

US to join EU in fighting Russian auto recycling fee as trade barrier

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By Danny King

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If they’re not going to get you on the front end, they’ll get you on the back end. That’s what the European Union is accusing the Russian government of doing with automotive trade restrictions, and the US appears to agree, Reuters reports. The US is joining the EU in a World Trade Organization (WTO) claim that Russia is violating trade agreements by imposing an auto-recycling fees on cars imported into the country.

Russia doesn’t have such a fee for Russia-produced vehicles. Therefore, such a fee is no different than the import tax that the Russians were told to remove in order to become part of the WTO.

When it comes to the automotive industry, Russian trade agreements have become all the more relevant as more people buy cars in the country. By the end of the decade, Russian auto sales will increase to 4.4 million units annually, which would make it the world’s fifth-largest auto market, and will leapfrog Germany to become Europe’s largest, Automotive News reports, citing a report from Boston Consulting Group.

US to join EU in fighting Russian auto recycling fee as trade barrier originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Mon, 22 Jul 2013 07:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Autoblog

News, Politics, Government

Global trade to be weaker than expected

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Global trade will be weaker than expected this year as European economies struggle with their debt crisis, and will recover only slightly in 2014, the World Trade Organization said Wednesday.

The global trade body forecast in its annual report that trade would grow 3.3 percent during 2013, significantly less than the 4.5 percent it had earlier predicted.

That would be only a meager improvement from the 2 percent rise in 2012, a terrible year for global trade. Exports were ravaged then by the financial turmoil in the 17-country eurozone, economic aftershocks from Japan‘s earthquake and nuclear crisis, and the impact of political unrest in the oil-rich Middle East.

The WTO had earlier forecast a 3.7 percent rise in trade in 2012, based on what WTO economist Coleman Nee described as assumptions that the European Union was “getting its act together” financially. In fact, the debt crisis continued and remains a source of uncertainty for the bloc, the world’s largest economic region.

Trade growth remains well below the 5.3 percent rate it averaged over the last 20 years, the WTO said. The figures represent the total volume of merchandise exported across borders, accounting for changes in prices and exchange rates.

The WTO‘s director-general, Pascal Lamy, said “the final trade numbers for 2012 are quite sobering,” with developed economies notching a paltry 1 percent increase in their exports last year while shipments from developing economies grew 3.3 percent.

“The revival of the sovereign debt crisis in the middle of the year meant that the deceleration of trade was stronger than anticipated,” he said.

The disparity between developed and developing economies was still more dramatic on the import side, WTO figures show. Among developed economies, imports fell 0.1 percent in 2012, while they rose 4.6 percent among developing economies.

For 2014, Lamy said trade is expected to rebound to “more like 5 percent growth,” close to the 5.2 percent rate seen in 2011.

The recent slowdown, he said, shows that “there is a need for more rules-based trade in order to reduce unemployment and to stimulate growth.”

“The threat of protectionism may be greater now than at any time since the start of the crisis, since other policies to restore growth have been …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

WTO Warns of Growing Threat in Protectionism

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By Reuters

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Jean-Christophe Bott/AP/KeystoneWorld Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy addresses a news conference on world trade figures for 2012 and prospects for 2013 at the WTO headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday.

GENEVA — The World Trade Organization slashed its forecast for trade growth in 2013 on Wednesday, saying it feared protectionism was on the increase.

It cut its forecast for global trade growth in 2013 to 3.3 percent from 4.5 percent and said trade grew only 2.0 percent in 2012. That was the smallest annual rise since records began in 1981 and the second weakest figure on record after 2009, when international trade shrank.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy warned that 2013 could turn out even weaker than expected, especially because of risks from the euro crisis, and countries might try to restrict trade further in a desperate attempt to shore up domestic growth.

“The threat of protectionism may be greater now than at any time since the start of the crisis, since other policies to restore growth have been tried and found wanting,” he said.

Lamy, who will step down at the end of August this year, called the 2012 growth rate “sobering.”

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Despite the hope of quickening trade this year and a provisional forecast of 5.0 percent growth in 2014, the annual rises are expected to stay below the historical trend of long-term growth, which was 6.0 percent for the 20 years leading up to the financial crisis but now stands at 5.3 percent.

“Traditionally we’ve reckoned on a 2:1 ratio of trade growth to GDP [gross domestic product] growth. This year it was 1:1 and we would expect to see that relationship re-establish itself,” said the WTO‘s chief economist Patrick Low.

The WTO forecasts are based on global GDP growth of 2.1 percent in 2013, a consensus estimate that the WTO said was unchanged from 2012.

“Risks to the forecast are firmly rooted on the downside and are mostly linked to the sovereign debt crisis in Europe,” the WTO said in a statement.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg on How the Global Economy Has Changed

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By Morgan Housel, The Motley Fool

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Deep recessions only occur every few decades. Big economic shifts occur only a few times a century. An analyst or businessman with 20 or 30 years’ experience can still be wet behind the ears as far as history is concerned.

Which is why someone like former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg is so fascinating to talk to. Greenberg has been an insurance executive since the 1950s, and has done business in dozens of countries. It’s not a stretch to say he is one of the most experienced financiers alive. If he hasn’t seen it all, he’s come darn close.

In a recent interview, I asked Greenberg how the global economy has changed since he began half a century ago. Here’s what he had to say (transcript follows):

Morgan Housel: You’ve been in this business for a long time, some 40-50 years. How is the global economy different today from what it was when you were starting and growing AIG, several decades ago?

Hank Greenberg: Much different — it’s a good question. We were first movers in many countries. Trade in services didn’t exist when we were building AIG. We traded with other countries for goods, but services they looked askance at you and said, “WTO doesn’t cover services.”

Banks, insurance companies, credit card companies, had to fight to get into a country and trade. I was on the President’s advisory board for trade negotiations. I had to first convince our own government that we ought to be negotiating trade in services.

We finally did. It took a long time, and even then many countries were very stubborn in opening their markets. You had to fight to get into these markets. That was one of the major differences; the amount of time that we had to spend in opening markets.

Then, as a first mover, you had an advantage. We could bring things, products, in countries that never had those products before — insurance products. It was an exciting adventure. Of course, we were very good at product innovation. The world changes all the time; new opportunities arise. If you’ve got the people and the vision, you do well — and we did.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

News, Politics, Government

New Zealand plans logo-free cigarette packs

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Strict against smoking already, New Zealand plans to make tobacco companies remove their logos from cigarette packs but will wait until a challenge to Australian legislation is resolved.

The packaging law “will remove the last remaining vestige of glamor from these deadly products,” Associate Minister of Health Tariana Turia said in announcing the plan Tuesday.

New Zealand already has increased cigarette taxes and makes retailers hide packs below the counter. The new legislation would be similar to an Australian law that took effect in December and replaced logos on packs with graphic warnings including cancer-riddled mouths.

The proposed law could be introduced in Parliament later this year to take effect when the trade case over Australia‘s law plays out — next year at the earliest.

Tobacco companies lost a legal challenge in Australia‘s highest court last year, but the World Trade Organization has agreed to hear a complaint about it from several tobacco-growing countries led by the Ukraine.

The Ukraine, Zimbabwe, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Indonesia argued that governments should pursue health policies “without unnecessarily restricting international trade and without nullifying intellectual property rights.”

New Zealand, Norway and Uruguay have lined up behind Australia in the WTO case. Uruguay told the trade body it couldn’t remain silent about “the most serious pandemic confronting humanity.”

Turia said the New Zealand government wants to minimize its legal exposure by waiting until the outcome of the Australian challenge. Even so, she said, the government is planning to set aside up to 6 million New Zealand dollars ($5.1 million) to defend against possible lawsuits from the “very litigious” tobacco companies.

Steve Rush, the New Zealand general manager of British American Tobacco, said in a statement Tuesday that the company is exploring its legal options.

“We expect to see numerous repercussions as a result of the government ignoring several international agreements as well as setting a dangerous precedent for other industries,” he said.

New Zealand has set itself a target of eliminating smoking altogether by 2025. Turia said the government would consider introducing further measures, such as banning smoking in cars and public places and further hiking taxes.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

Indonesia readies for $1 trillion trade talks

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Indonesia may hold the key to a $1 trillion injection into the global economy.

That’s how much the World Trade Organization believes is riding on talks later this year in Bali, when trade ministers hope to cut through some of the red tape that slows global commerce.

Indonesia‘s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told The Associated Press that failure is not an option and that a strong effort is being put in to ensure that the WTO meeting in Bali is “crowned with success.”

Trade ministers agreed Saturday at the World Economic Forum in Davos that some of the key elements of a global trade deal can be fleshed out by summer, in preparation for ministerial talks in December.

The current trade talks, known as the Doha Round, began in 2001,

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

Linux

Greg Grossmeier: Excerpts from “Subsistence: Perspective for a Society Based on Commons”

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by Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Essay from the wonderful book The Wealth of the Commons: A world beyond market & state.

The argument isn’t complete in the article (thus also not in my excerpts) but it does appear there is a book-length work on the subject by this author (with another co-author).

Over the course of modernity, commons as societal institutions have increasingly been reified to being considered merely material objects. This is nothing less than a fundamentalist reinterpretation of the commons influenced by neoliberal thought. No longer do people perceive the purpose or the meaning of socially binding arrangements when it comes to commons, they mostly see only the object itself to which a societal convention refers. And where the material reality of the phenomena in question is immaterial and volatile – for example, the air the knowledge about a plant’s healing properties – they are reified by privatizing them and assigning them a monetary value – through the establishment of carbon emissions trading rights, for instance, or through the patenting of knowledge according to the WTO’s regime for intellectual property rights.

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Economic, ecological and social crises are merging to form a single one, a crisis of civilization. In light of catastrophes that they have triggered, the values that characterize our current civilization are proving to be destructive. We need a paradigm shift worldwide: a shift away from egocentric consumerism, away from a society’s structural imperative to maximize growth, and away from our arrogance with respect to the living environment. We, the people of our epoch, need new (old) societal institutions that are bound to a new (old) relationship of humans and nature.

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In keeping with the dominant understanding that the feasibility of any plan is dependent on funding, the question of money is often raised to quickly in discussions about the realization of alternatives to the growth-based economy.l Even if some projects to strengthen the commons cannot do without money, this does not alter the fact that the logic of money as we know it is a fundamental built-in error of current-day socialization.

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The logic of money is that of a mathematical equation, an exchange of equivalents. Order is supposedly achieved through the objectivity (or tangible quality of an object) of an invisible hand, which is supposed to be superior to the disorder of diversity given by nature. In the present, this is proving to be completely wrong. The logic of money is not suitable as a moral foundation for civilization. (emphasis added)

Presented without commentary (other than my above emphasis) under fair use and/or the terms of the license of the original article (CC:BY-SA 3.0) just in case fair use wasn’t enough 😉

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

News, Politics, Government

Brazil's WTO candidate to focus on consensus

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Brazil‘s candidate to head the World Trade Organization says that if he’s selected he’ll focus on restarting long-stalled global talks to lower trade barriers.

Roberto Azevedo says he’d strive to build consensus between developed and developing countries in hopes of resuming the so-called Doha Round of talks that began in 2001 but have not reached agreement.

Azevedo told a news conference Thursday in Brasilia that the talks’ failure has sparked “serious and concrete differences” among the trade organization’s 157 member states.

The 55-year-old Azevedo has been Brazil‘s ambassador to the WTO. In his bid to replace the WTO‘s outgoing director general, Pascal Lamy of France, Azevedo is up against seven other candidates from countries including South Korea, Jordan, Kenya, Costa Rica and Mexico.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News