Dear International Trade and Investment Committee Members,
Here are the international trade and investment articles and publications of interest for the week of July 14 to July 20. Andrew Lanouette has curated this week’s edition. Andrew is International Trade Counsel at Cassidy Levy Kent in Ottawa, practising in the areas of international trade law and public procurement. He is also the Co-Chair of the International Trade and Investment Committee.
News
- Pacific trade talks have reached broad agreement on labour issues and sanitary and phytosanitary standards but some difficult aspects remain to be tackled, Japan's chief negotiator said on Saturday.
- United States Trade Representative Michael Froman announced today that a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement panel issued a mixed result in a broad challenge brought by China against various aspects of 17 separate countervailing duty investigations conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
- Ottawa says a $500-million NAFTA challenge launched by U.S. drug giant Eli Lilly and Co. against Canada over its patent-law regime is “wholly without merit” and should be tossed out.
- World Trade Organisation judges said on Monday the United States broke its rules in imposing hefty duties on Chinese steel products, solar panels and a range of other goods that Washington argues enjoyed government subsidies.
- India's top trade official said the government would not block the world's first global trade deal over lack of progress on food subsidy talks, clarifying New Delhi's stance after an earlier threat to derail the deal.
- The Canada Border Services Agency has announced its semi-annual trade verification targets for the rest of 2014. The list includes new targets for tariff classification and country of origin.
- Ecuador and the European Union reached a trade agreement on Thursday, which supporters say will allow the Andean nation to increase its exports to the European bloc by at least $500 million in the next three years.
- Canadian wholesale sales jumped by an unexpectedly high 2.2% in May from April to a record $52.58 billion, Statistics Canada data indicated on Friday.
- Visions of chlorine-drenched chickens and the prospect of genetically modified ``Frankenfood'' invading dinner tables across the European Union are proving serious impediments to the signing of a sweeping free trade agreement between the United States and the 28-country bloc.
- Eleventh hour negotiations to win Indian approval for a breakthrough global trade pact may not have succeeded in the end despite initial signs of progress, sources involved in the discussions said on Saturday.
Commentaries
- Politicians and protectionists have been served by the enduring myth that the United States is the most open market in the world and its government earnestly adheres to the rules of trade, while others, intent on exploiting U.S. naivety, cheat and pursue state-sponsored mercantilism. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is both a politician and a protectionist, so he was probably twice as tickled by Friday’s U.S. Department of Commerce determination that South Korean exporters are dumping “Oil Country Tubular Goods” (OCTG) – a class of steel products used primarily in oil and gas well projects – in the U.S. market.
- Did Jean-Claude Juncker just come out against including “investor-state dispute settlement” in the trade deal now under negotiation between the U.S. and the European Union? That issue – the creation of a system for foreign investors to challenge what they believe is unfair treatment by the host government of their investment – has become one of the most controversial points in the negotiations.