Posted on 04/01/2005 4:02:14 PM PST by nextthunder
EU to slap extra 15% duty on range of US goods
BRUSSELS: The European Union plans to slap an extra 15 percent import duty on a range of US goods over Washington’s failure to apply an international trade ruling against an anti-dumping law, the EU executive said on Thursday.
The duty would hit imports including paper, agricultural, textile and machinery products from May 1, and affect slightly less than $28 million in trade, the European Commission said.
“The Commission took this latest step in the dispute over the Byrd Amendment in light of the continuing failure of the United States to bring its legislation in conformity with its international obligations,” it said in a statement.
The level of EU retaliation would be revised annually to adjust to the level of damage caused to EU companies, it said. While the Commission’s plan needed the formal approval of EU ministers, this was expected to be a formality, officials said, adding there were no plans to meet US officials before the additional duty came into force.
Neither was there a meeting planned between EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick — until recently US trade representative — who is scheduled to be in Brussels early next week, they said.
In November, the World Trade Organisation gave approval to the EU, Japan and others to apply an initial $150 million in trade sanctions after Washington failed to conform with a WTO ruling to repeal a subsidy programme for US companies.
Known as the Byrd Amendment, the programme distributes funds raised by anti-dumping duties on imports to the companies that initially requested government anti-dumping protection.
More than $1 billion has been doled out to US ball bearing, steel, seafood, candle and other companies under the Byrd Amendment over the past four years. Canada is expected to announce similar measures against the United States, its top trading partner, later on Thursday.
Mostly textiles: Most of the products to be hit with the EU’s extra duty relate to textiles — trousers and overalls made of synthetic fibres, for example. The only agricultural item is sweetcorn.
Five areas of stationery are also targeted, while in the machinery sector the products listed are crane lorries, along with spectacle frames and mountings. reuters
Fine...I'll just buy more crap from China. D'oh!
What a shame.
Free-Trade bump!!!
Canada to put trade surtax on U.S. goodsFrom wire reports
OTTAWA — The Canadian government Thursday said it will slap a 15% surtax on some U.S. products in retaliation for a lingering trade dispute. The retaliatory surtax will amount to $11.6 million this year.
The announcement of the surtax on cigarettes, oysters and live swine from the USA came just as the European Union took a similar measure.
Canada is joining countries from around the world protesting a U.S. trade measure known as the Byrd amendment, which the World Trade Organization has deemed illegal.
The Byrd amendment allows American companies to keep the proceeds that Washington collects in anti-dumping disputes, something Canada and other countries complain unfairly enriches their U.S. rival firms.
"For the last four years, Canada and a number of other countries have repeatedly urged the United States to repeal the Byrd amendment," Canadian International Trade Minister Jim Peterson said in a statement Thursday.
"Retaliation is not our preferred option, but it is a necessary action. International trade rules must be respected."
The Canadian sanctions, which also cover certain types of fish, are to take effect May 1.
The EU says it will slap duties of up to 15%, also on May 1, on such U.S. imports as paper, textiles, machinery and farm produce.
The 25-member EU said it took that action "in light of the continuing failure of the United States to bring its legislation in conformity with its international obligations."
Both Canada and the EU have long asked Washington to repeal the Byrd amendment.
In November, the WTO gave Canada and the other co-complainants the authority to retaliate. The other countries involved include Mexico, Japan, India and Brazil.
The developments come a day after the Bush administration cited a total of 58 countries and three trading areas for erecting significant trade barriers that harm U.S. manufacturers and farmers.
As usual, the report devoted the most coverage to China, a total of 58 pages, but included countries from Angola to Vietnam.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/trade/2005-03-31-trade-usat_x.htm
OK, now it is time to hit them with a 25% tariff on goods. Trade is a TWO-WAY STREET but the idiots in the EU have not figured that out yet -- so let's show them.
The duty would hit imports including paper, agricultural, textile and machinery products from May 1, and affect slightly less than $28 million in trade, the European Commission said.
Excellent! Bring on the trade war!
10% German unemployment? 11% German unemployment? 12% German unemployment?
You ain't seen nothing yet, just wait until they find that the largest buyer of their exports just closed our doors to them.
In short, bring it on!
With the extra duties and the new RoHS regulations going into efect in 2006; I wonder of some companies will just stop selling into the EU. Better of selling goods in Asia.
Japan, Mexico Prepare to Follow EU, Canada Sanctions on U.S.
April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Japan and Mexico are preparing to follow the European Union and Canada in imposing extra import duties on U.S. goods after Congress failed to repeal a law that has handed companies such as Timken Co. more than $1 billion in tariffs paid by their competitors.
The Byrd Amendment, first ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization in September 2002, was introduced in 2000 to compensate U.S. industries hurt by foreign goods ``dumped'' at below-market prices. It prompted complaints by a record number of countries at the 10-year-old WTO.
Unless Congress repeals the law, the case may become the most damaging ever at the WTO when the U.S. begins distributing tariffs collected on Canadian lumber, worth $4 billion a year. Japan, the economy most affected by the Byrd Amendment, has the right to impose customs duties worth 125 billion yen ($116 million), the biggest sanctions awarded to Japan in a dispute.
``We have not yet decided when our retaliation measures will be invoked,'' said Kunihiko Kawazu, first counselor at Japan's mission to the WTO in Geneva. ``We have already been authorized to do so at any time, but we will make a judgment taking into account how the discussion in Congress goes on repealing the Byrd Amendment.''
The EU and Canada said yesterday they will impose an extra 15 percent duty on a combined $40 million worth of U.S. imports, including some types of American stationery, clothing, live swine, cigarettes and oysters, beginning May 1.
Choosing Targets
Mexico is deciding which U.S. products will be targeted, said Fernando de Mateo, the country's ambassador to the WTO.
``We're analyzing with what we're going to retaliate,'' he said. ``The problem is not revenge; the problem is you cannot have your cake and eat it. This amendment provides an incentive for producers to say `my neighbor is hurting me.'''
Mexican President Vicente Fox will decide when to apply the sanctions, de Mateo said, adding that he was uncertain about the timing of any decision.
``Japan will move slowly, but ultimately it will move,'' said Lewis Leibowitz, a trade attorney with Hogan & Hartson LLP in Washington and legal counsel to Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition, an organization lobbying for the Byrd Amendment's repeal that counts Caterpillar Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., Emerson Electric Co. and Nissan North America Inc. among its members.
``Retaliation alone is not going to do this,'' he said. ``If the softwood lumber duties start to get distributed, then retaliation would be huge, but while that's a good reason to repeal, the better reason is that it's a bad law.''
`Dislocations'
The law hurts the U.S. economy by creating ``dislocations'' and it acts as an incentive both to file cases at the WTO and to keep sanctions in place, Leibowitz said. U.S. President George W. Bush called for a repeal of the Byrd Amendment in his budget proposal to Congress on Feb. 7, saying that ending the law could save the U.S. Treasury $1.6 billion in the next fiscal year.
``Retaliation heightens the visibility of the law in Congress,'' says Steve Alexander, CITAC's executive director. ``Imposing retaliation gives credibility to the idea that the law is having a negative impact on the U.S. economy.''
The WTO gave the EU, Canada, Brazil, Japan, India, South Korea and Mexico the right to retaliate against the U.S. law on Nov. 27. Chile won the right to strike back on Dec. 17.
Double Punishment
In their complaints, the governments said the law enables the U.S. to punish exporters twice -- first by imposing a duty and then by giving the money collected to the exporter's rivals. After the U.S. missed an end-2003 deadline for compliance, the WTO authorized governments to impose retaliatory duties on U.S. goods equal to 72 percent of the total paid by their companies.
The European tariffs, worth about $28 million, add to trans- Atlantic trade tensions as the EU and U.S. battle over aid for aircraft makers Airbus SAS and Boeing Co., the EU challenges tax breaks for U.S. exporters worth $4 billion a year and the U.S. fights European resistance to new gene-engineered crops.
U.S. makers of steel, ball bearings, honey and candles are the main beneficiaries of the Byrd Amendment. Total payouts to the U.S. companies would rise as high as $1.6 billion this fiscal year unless the law is repealed, the EU has said.
>> United States to bring its legislation in conformity with its international obligations
What international obligations are you referring to? Certainly not NAFTA and GATT since they are unconstitutional treaties (the constitution requires supermajority approval by the Senate for treaty ratificaation). Again, what obligations are you referring to?
a package of 34 treaties, all of which were ratified by a show of hands -- no recorded vote.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a325b3f5d31.htm
Annan in historic meeting with Supreme Court &Congress/is believed to be unprecedented.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b0c30a81760.htm
The United States has signed agreements and the rest of the world expects it to live up to its word, just as the U.S. should and does expect the rest of the world to live up to theirs.
The issue here is that the Byrd Amendment, and some other unilateral actions, have the U.S. not living up to their end of the deals signed. If the Europeans aren't living up to their end, slap trade sanctions on them too. If we in Canada aren't, do the same to us. But we do live up to our word on trade and we expect the U.S. to do likewise.
NAFTA and GATT,wto are part ot the U.N
The United States needs to get out of signed agreements
And what does this say? That the world is trying to tell the US how it will conduct its world trade, what prices will be paid, and what access they can have to our markets??
I guess it gets down to who is trying to blackmail who -- the world depends on the economy of the US to sell much of its goods -- yet they think they can tell us how we are going to operate, what they can do to us, etc.
IMHO, the WTO was a bad idea to begin with.
I suppose the only way to balance this out is to give them a few thousand IT tech jobs. Apparently, the more jobs we give to other countries, the better off we are here at home.
28 million? this is hardly worth mention in the news... who cares if the euroweenies want to act tough over 28 million dollars...
China makes comsumer crap. Ask any engineer what they would do if trade with the EU in for instance machine tools were to be halted. Chaos.
EU, we can take you down Any Day in Any Kind of War.
You want a Trade War?? You got it! Wanna bet whose economies fall?? Can you spell Euroweenies??
don't forget the hi gas cost you pay, because china needs more oil
The US trade "partners" have a basically protectionist foreign trade policy. Of course, in the long run, it is self defeating because is only serves to cause an adjustment in the exchange rate which comes back to bite them.
Uh, are there any goods made in the US anymore? I'm hoping the BIG PICTURE works, whereby China will evolve to capitalism and refrain from spending their wad on missiles pointed at us.
They're not raising the price of their stuff, only the price or ours there. In retaliation, I'll buy more communist made crap from china... It's lose/lose.
Though, to be honest, anything with Byrd's name on it should probably be repealed automatically -- except maybe for the Robert Byrd KKK Museum.
The thing that struck me about this is that they are angered that we are giving the anti-dumping funds to the companies affected by the dumping. So an EU company wants to put say our ball bearing company out of business by dumping ball bearing on the US. It is ok for the US to put extra duty on the dumping company, but not give the collected funds to the company being targeted. I say nuts to that.
Excellent! Bring on the trade war!
10% German unemployment? 11% German unemployment? 12% German unemployment?
You ain't seen nothing yet, just wait until they find that the largest buyer of their exports just closed our doors to them.
In short, bring it on!
The United States had no authority to sign those agreements. The constitution is clear that a treaty requires a confirmation by 2/3rd's by the Senate. Chief Justice John Marshall, in Marbury vs. Madison, stated, "Certainly, all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and, consequently, the theory of every such government must be that an act of the legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void". Read it again: the "law" is VOID.
If you have no respect for the Constitution, or if you believe in a so-called "Living Constitution" (which is no constitution at all), then please enlighten us with your reasoning why your way is better than the principle of binding government officials with the chains of a written constitution. Let me warn you that you have some pretty serious competion, such as the gentleman who wrote these lines:
"On every question of construction [of the constitution], carry ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." (Thomas Jefferson, 1823)
>> NAFTA and GATT,wto are part ot the U.N
NAFTA and GATT are unconstitutional treaties.
Here is a list of companies we've confirmed are "Exporting America." These are U.S. companies either sending American jobs overseas, or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor, instead of American workers. http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/popups/lou.dobbs.tonight/exporting.america/frameset.exclude.html
Thank you
That's fair and honorable, but Canada is *specifically* violating NAFTA with its rules that limit foreign purchases of Canadian stocks (but not bonds). Too much of the international press is acting as though Canada and the EU have *nothing* to lose and are at no fault; that's probably setting up some expectations that will be brutally dashed in any large-scale trade war of the future (though in all fairness, I doubt it comes to that between Canada and the U.S.).
Free trade at all costs?
By Lou Dobbs
CNN
Friday, March 4, 2005 Posted: 11:24 AM EST (1624 GMT)
(CNN) -- The Bush administration is trying to push the Central American Free Trade Agreement through Congress quickly and quietly.
The White House, however, couldn't find the votes for this so-called free trade agreement before his re-election in the fall, and the president likely doesn't have the votes for it now. And that's a good thing for American workers.
CAFTA advocates say the agreement would open up free trade between the United States and the Dominican Republic and five countries in Central America: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
But this agreement represents the same free trade at all costs policy that has led to a 70 percent increase in the trade deficit since 2001. We're not signing trade agreements to open new markets for our exports. Instead we're continuing to enter into outsourcing agreements with countries that cannot possibly buy our goods.
If you add up the gross domestic products of the six CAFTA economies, the total market comes to about $85 billion, according to the latest available figures. That's only slightly larger than the economy of New Haven, Connecticut and less than a fifth of the size of New York City. As such, expanding trade with this bloc cannot possibly be a serious growth driver for the $11 trillion U.S. economy.
The CAFTA trading partners are simply too poor and too small to serve as major consumer markets for anything made in America, if indeed we still are manufacturing anything in this country. But with 40 percent of workers in Central America earning less than $2 a day, CAFTA will pit the working poor of these countries against American workers, especially textile workers and small farmers. U.S. multinationals don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to keeping jobs at home in the face of cheaper labor overseas.
More than 35 percent of all U.S. goods exports to the six CAFTA countries consist of turnaround exports, which are unfinished textile, apparel and other materials that are not ultimately consumed in these countries. These "round-trip" imports are assembled by low-wage workers and exported right back to the American marketplace.
As a result, U.S. exports to CAFTA countries generally produce greater imports to our market, which further swells the worsening record trade deficit. In fact, turnaround exports have contributed to the U.S. trade deficit with the six CAFTA nations rising by nearly 60 percent from 1997-2004, according to the U.S. Business & Industry Council.
And at least three of the six CAFTA countries are in such a weak financial position they couldn't possibly boost imports. The Dominican Republic is currently receiving a $665 million standby loan from the International Monetary Fund to help the country emerge from its economic crisis of 2003. The program is set to last until mid-2007, and the country will be under pressure to increase exports and curb imports. Unless, of course, those imports are turnaround imports that are shipped right back into the U.S. market.
Honduras and Nicaragua are also receiving special debt relief from the IMF because of their great indebtedness and high poverty rates. While they're not austerity programs like the Dominican Republic's, neither country has much capacity to sharply increase net imports.
"Americans know a bad trade deal when they see one," says Ernest Baynard, executive director of Americans for Fair Trade. "They've already had to live through one for 10 years under NAFTA."
U.S. workers have lost nearly 900,000 jobs as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement, most of them in the higher-paying manufacturing sector, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
But NAFTA's effects are even more evident in our exploding trade deficit. Exports to Canada and Mexico have more than doubled since 1993, but imports to our neighboring countries have risen by 173 percent, from $151 billion to $412 billion. As a result, the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico has ballooned from $9.1 billion in 1993 to $110.8 billion last year.
CAFTA may bring lower prices to consumers, but it would most likely lead to more jobs being shipped to cheap foreign labor markets. And a new poll on CAFTA shows American consumers do not want to give up their jobs for lower prices, according to the nonprofit organization Americans for Fair Trade. In fact, 74 percent of those polled said they would oppose CAFTA if it reduces consumer prices but eliminates jobs for American workers.
"The only people who stand to gain from CAFTA," Baynard adds, "are people who are offshoring jobs already or want to offshore jobs."
That is something we simply cannot afford. Working Americans know all too well the high cost of free trade. I can only hope Congress has learned that
No, just buy 100% less from Europe. They are not going to get $hit from me after the way our EU allies supported us during the Iraqi war.
I've been to Europe dozens of times, lived in Germany for three years in the Air Force, worked in Germany for about a year. Germany is my 2nd home - but I'm one bitter bastard. There is no Mercedes in my future.
The people this hurts the most are the damned EU citizens!
I am SO sick of this bullshit legislation from Brussels!
I could spit.
I buy a lot of my books on-line from the USA - because of the strength of the euro now, I find it's cheaper - and easier - to purchase my books from US.
Does anyone know what the 'items of stationary' are?
Paper, I presume?
That's just wrong.
Free trade is fine, but that's not what's going on when you have China and India (among others) artificially inflating the value of the U.S. Dollar (which thereby lowers the price of their exports to the U.S.) on the one hand, and massive Airbus subsidies in the EU on the other.
I'm totally confused. The neo-cons told us GATT and WTO would create an economic utopia, not a world where trade-wars are the norm. How did this happen? Prices of goods were supposed to decrease, not increase. I remember all the great things that were going to happen. What the heck happened?
Then watch the Euro fur fly.
The EU is doomed to failure. The cause of its demise will be centralized over-regulation, applying the same cookie cutter solution (a.k.a. French Socialism, which is economically breaking the back of France) to all its member states. In its present form, it is NOT going to work. Yet I hear that if I expressed such a view within the EU, I could be charged with a crime.
Charged with a crime?
Um...not in my country.
I'm in Ireland - and we are part of the EU. But our economy is one of the strongest in Europe. Mainly due to free market initiatives and a pro-inward investment policies.
Ireland is doing very well at the moment. The Celtic Tiger economy that we enjoyed through the late nineties, slowed slightly at the start of the new millenium..but even with further EU expansion, Ireland is holding her own.
Imagine, a little tiny island out-pacing France and Germany? Well, it has happened. And I'm praying those bastards (pardon, my French) don't try to regulate us back into recession!
We shoudl make them pay double with our own tarrifs. Lets see who runs out of jobs first !
Yes, this sucks but. . . " affect slightly less than $28 million in trade". That's negligible compared our overall trade.
Brilliant. Lets see how many more threads we get from Willie Green if we embark on your course of economic mutually assured destruction. But hey, American jobs aren't important, as long as they're in export industries, right?
Doesn't the dollar's drop against the Euro have the same effect? Besides, let the Euro-bozos tax themselves into oblivion. One of these days their population may wake up (or emigrate to somplace with a higher standard of living like say, Mexico).
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