Posted on 01/19/2005 9:49:16 AM PST by Red Badger
TSUNAMI-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.
While millions of Europeans are sending aid to Thailand to help its recovery, trade authorities in Brussels are demanding that Thai Airlines, its national carrier, pays £1.3 billion to buy its double-decker aircraft.
The demand will come as a deep embarrassment to Peter Mandelson, the trade commissioner, whose officials started the negotiation before the disaster struck Thailand - killing tens of thousands of people and damaging its economy.
While aid workers from across Europe are helping to rebuild Thai livelihoods, trade officials in Brussels are concluding a jets-for-prawns deal, which they had hoped to announce next month.
As the world’s largest producer of prawns, Thailand has become so efficient that its wares are half the price of those caught by Norway, the main producer of prawns for the EU.
To ensure the Thais cannot compete, EU officials five years ago removed its shrimp industry from the EU’s generalised system of preferential tariffs - designed to share Western wealth with developing countries by trade.
The EU has instead slapped a tariff of 12 per cent on its fish - three times that imposed on prawns from Malaysia, its neighbour. This is still less than the US tariff on Thai prawns: 97 per cent.
The prawn tax is one in a series of protectionist measures expected to cost east Asia some £130 million each year - money being taken from its economies while EU citizens donate millions in charity.
Five days after the tsunami struck, the EU legislated against Thailand by slapping a new tariff designed to extinguish its booming trade in cumarin, a plant extract used in perfume.
On 31 December, the EU imposed duties of €3,480 (£2,430) a tonne for Thai exports of cumarin - a move entirely designed to protect Rhodia, a French chemicals firm and the EU’s only producer of cumarin.
Oxfam has attacked the tariffs, saying: "When countries are lying prostrate before us, it is criminal to continue to tax them on what they sell."
Sri Lanka has already pleaded to be exempt from EU and US textiles tariffs as it tries to recover.
I hope they give EU the finger...
EU - Mafia
I like it ;)
I'd like to give the clown that decided to tax Thai prawn 97% the finger!
Exactly! This is extortion and blackmail on an international level. Is Sicily in the EU?
Dah, hey! You wanna make dis easy or should I like oughta chase youse around da room a little?
By joining the EU countries have given up all thoughts of Sovereignty and have made themselves slaves to France and germany the real rulers of the EU. The EU is really Vichy France 2005 style.
so they can use the 380's to fly the shrimps to EU...............?
I wonder how the EU would like it if we told every country,
"Buy Boeing aircraft or face American tariffs"?
this just figures...
I figure the EU will continue to embarrass itself as long as it exists...mainly because it takes it's marching orders from the frogs....
I have heard of jumbo shrimp, I have even heard of shrimp gumbo....but I have never heard of shrimp for jumbo.
The EU is well positioned to in time act more and more brutal to "outsiders" like this. In essence the serve as a proxy for EU members for such transparent agressive acts so they can individually maintain the appearance of clean hands.
>Doesn't the Mafia do similar things? Buy my fire insurance so you won't have a fire........
Always picking on us Italians....
Take that Kofi! They'll get their tsunami aid back with interest.
I wonder how the EU would like it if we told every country,
"Buy Boeing aircraft or face American tariffs"?
That's what we should do. Free market my ass. Can't wait until the first A-380 falls apart in the air. Remember the first A-300. The French managed to crash it into a forest on one of its demonstration flights near a Paris airport.
Of course, our entire domestic shrimp industry would dissapear in 90 days if we didn't.
So9
But the tariffs are already there. Buying the planes gives them an opportunity to get the tariffs lifted. Sounds fair to me. According to this article the U.S. has even higher tariffs on the prawns and gives them no opportunity to get them lifted.
It's a big sign that the sales of their new planes are a disaster.
The EU is going to implode. They have deep divisions of everything, especially in cultures.
But we aren't telling Thailand to buy something from us or else. We just hit them with 97% tariff to protect our flailing shrimp fishing industry.......
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.