A European Commission executive told webinar listeners that while politicians in the West are viewing trade differently, remaining open to free trade is vital for the European Union's prosperity. Margrethe Vestager, executive vice president of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age, spoke Feb. 4 at the World Trade Symposium hosted by The Economist. “We have retired the old idea of free trade at any price,” she said. In this decade, Europe will be looking at trade through the prism of human rights, workers' rights, best recycling practices, digitalization and climate change, she said.
The Russian government in November 2020 approved a proposal to replace its tariff rate quotas on imported beef with a flat rate tariff of 27.5%, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service said in a report Feb. 1. The proposal now awaits approval by the Eurasian Economic Commission, and, if approved, would enter into effect on Jan. 1, 2022. High-quality beef would remain unaffected as it is currently not subject to quotas. The U.S. has not had market access in Russia for its beef exports since 2014 when Moscow banned U.S. agriculture and livestock exports in apparent retaliation for the U.S.'s stance on Russia's support for Ukrainian rebels (see 1412230061). Prior to 2014, U.S. beef exports operated under a 15% tariff rate, and if Russia decides to lift its ban on American beef in 2022, that rate will apply to high-quality beef, but all other beef exports would be subjected to the 27.5% flat rate.
Speakers for Navigating the New Normal, a keynote panel at a trade symposium convened by The Economist Feb. 2, discussed whether the political pressure to bring supply chains closer to home will overcome the fact that Vietnam's and China's economies weathered the pandemic better than Europe, with no conclusion, but also talked about what the future of the “special relationship” between the U.S. and the United Kingdom will be in trade.
The Wisconsin Farmers Union is calling on the Biden administration to drop the U.S.'s first USMCA dispute -- a case on Canadian tariff rate quotas -- the group announced in a blog post. WFU said that the demands of the largest dairy companies to tackle Canada's supply management policies on dairy products shouldn't come before needs of small farmers and fair market prices.
Trade advocates and a trade scholar discussed how effective U.S.-Asia sectoral agreements could be, as well as the possible downsides of such agreements, during an Asia Society Policy Institute webinar Jan. 26. The Japan mini-deal was not exactly a sectoral deal because it lowered tariffs on a variety of products across different categories, but the agreement's digital trade plank is one that negotiators could consider as a template for a digital trade accord across more Asian countries.
The European Union wants to work with America on ways to develop Artificial Intelligence standards, design a carbon adjustment border mechanism and stockpile medicines and personal protective gear in a way that lessens dependency on certain Asian countries, its ambassador to the U.S. said on a webinar hosted by the European American Chamber of Commerce
More than 70 trade groups from Europe and the U.S. asked President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to remove or suspend tariffs on goods outside of aerospace and steel and aluminum that have been targets in those trade disputes. “Suspending these tariffs is urgently needed to address the economic harms our industries are currently facing and will also be a positive step to help re-establish a cooperative Trans Atlantic trading relationship,” they wrote in a Jan. 25 letter. COVID-19-related shutdowns made 2020 a tough year for business, they said, and “the ongoing EU-U.S. trade disputes and additional tariffs which continue to plague Trans-Atlantic trade have made a bad situation worse.” Signers include food, wine and spirits interests on both sides of the Atlantic; European tool, cosmetics and perfume industries; and a broad array of U.S. trade groups, among them the American Chemistry Council, the National Retail Federation, the American Apparel and Footwear Association, and the American Association of Port Authorities.
China and New Zealand updated their 12-year-old free trade agreement to increase trade in goods, revise certain rules of origin and address technical barriers to trade, China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reported Jan. 26. The deal's provisions include addressing trade barriers on certain wood and paper products and requiring New Zealand to lower its threshold for reviewing Chinese investments.
As the text of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment was released Jan. 22, analysts are evaluating how much of a difference the agreement, if ratified, would make in the economic relationship between the parties to the pact. The Institut Montaigne, a French think tank that supports free markets, published a policy paper that said, “Overall, the EU-China CAI has been oversold and underpowered.” It noted that most of the annexes, that actually list the sectors in China that would be open to European investment, are still not published. Moreover, author François Godement said that there are qualifiers in the text that make some commitments unenforceable, such as China's pledge to pursue ratifications of International Labor Organization standards on forced labor.
Even though the Joe Biden administration will have a very different approach to trade than did the Trump administration, that will not mean a wholesale rejection of what its predecessors did, analysts said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies webinar Jan. 21.