Dear International Trade and Investment Committee Members,
Here are the international trade and investment articles and publications of interest for the week of September 29 to October 5. Anca Sattler has curated this week’s edition. Anca is an associate at Gowlings in Ottawa, practising primarily in the areas of international trade law, copyright law, and commercial litigation.
News
- The WTO committee preparing work on implementing a trade facilitation deal was unable to agree on 29 September 2014 on how to proceed, as deadlock continued on adopting the instrument to trigger the process for the Agreement’s entry into force (the so-called “Protocol”).
- Director-General Roberto Azevêdo, on 1 October, welcomed hundreds of participants — NGOs, academics, the private sector, the media, governments, international organizations, and members of the public — to the first of 68 sessions of the three-day 2014 WTO Public Forum. Explaining the theme of this year’s forum, he said “trade matters to everyone because every day, for good or ill, it affects us all…and it affects the poorest the most”. He pointed to a study that showed perceptions of trade are shifting, and that “the greatest proportion of supporters were found in developing countries”.
- Director— General Roberto Azevêdo, in opening the WTO Public Forum’s second plenary session “Why Trade Matters to Africa” on 2 October, said that trade has an important role in realizing Africa’s “sheer potential”. He said that fully implementing the Trade Facilitation Agreement “will help to integrate Africa—and cut the costs of trade significantly”.
- The importance of advancing a holistic approach to trade – one that better integrates the human dimension and addresses sustainable development concerns – took centre stage during discussions at the WTO on Wednesday as the global trade body began its yearly Public Forum.
- The EU and Canada signed their bilateral free trade pact last Friday, five years after launching the talks and almost a year after announcing that they had reached an “agreement in principle” on the subject. The deal, known formally as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), was inked at a day-long EU-Canada summit.
- The annual high-level meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) failed to reach agreement on a number of important issues in its norm-setting agenda. Specifically, the 22-30 September gathering saw members openly at odds over the organisation’s mandate, its relationship to development, and its governance arrangements.
- US President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi concluded their leaders’ meeting in Washington on Tuesday, directing their officials to “consult urgently” with their fellow trading partners in the hopes of resolving the current WTO impasse on the implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) and the issue of public food stockholding.
- Secrecy about trade negotiations between the United States and Japan is hampering progress on a broader Pacific trade pact, a senior Chilean official said on Friday. Hopes of sealing a deal this year on the ambitious 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are looking dim, largely because of a deadlock between the pact's two biggest economies, the United States and Japan, over how widely Japan will open its doors to farm exports.
- Russian investment bank VTB Capital is switching focus to Asian markets, the chairman of the bank's board of directors said, after the West imposed sanctions on its parent, VTB Bank. VTB Bank, Russia's second-largest bank by assets, was sanctioned by the United States and European Union in the summer over Moscow's role in the Ukraine crisis, limiting its access to international capital along with other Russian state banks.
Government Announcements/Press Releases
- The Honourable Ed Fast, Minister of International Trade, today took stock of the recent historic trade achievements in key markets, which directly benefit hard-working Canadians. A number of significant milestones in opening markets for Canadian businesses were accomplished in September 2014, making it a historic month in Canada’s job-creating, pro-trade plan..
- The Honourable Ed Fast, Minister of International Trade, meets with Beate Merk, Bavaria’s Minister of European Affairs and Regional Relations, to discuss close economic ties between Canada and Germany and the benefits of the Canada-European Union trade agreement for both countries. Minister Merk is accompanied by Kerstin Schreyer-Stäblein, Member of the State Legislature.
- The Honourable Ed Fast, Minister of International Trade, and Mireya Aguero, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Honduras, celebrate the entry into force of the Canada-Honduras Free Trade Agreement and parallel agreements on labour and environmental cooperation.
Commentaries
- ISDS may be left out of the final CETA agreement. If so, too bad for Canadians and Europeans who might have been employed by investors who instead decide to stay at home.
- Predictions of doom over the Canada-China deal aren’t borne out by real-life experience. The Canada-China investment treaty – what Canada calls a Foreign Investment Protection Agreement or “FIPA” – officially entered into force yesterday.
- OTTAWA - Weaker exports of cars and crude oil unexpectedly shifted Canada's merchandise trade balance with the rest of the world from a surplus of $2.2 billion in July to a deficit of $610 million in August, Statistics Canada said Friday.