Despite a continued lull in Washington, it will be a busy week for U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman as he visits Asia, Africa and Europe to advance the U.S. trade agenda in a trip that will include discussions on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), U.S.-China relations and the U.S-European trade deal.
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U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has requested the U.S. International Trade Commission to assess the economic impact of eliminating nearly 400 tariff lines, nearly all of which have been proposed by the other World Trade Organization countries participating in the Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA).
Chinese policies aimed at developing a stronger semiconductor sector are among a laundry list of emerging challenges posed by Beijing that representatives of the U.S. tech industry are urging President Obama to address during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington in September.
Lawmakers and U.S. stakeholders who are pressing for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to include strong, enforceable currency rules were further galvanized last week by Vietnam's devaluation of its currency in an effort to stem the impact of China's decision earlier this month to devalue the renminbi (RMB) relative to the U.S. dollar.
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries at the ministerial meeting in Maui last month were able to agree on “practically all” of the intellectual property (IP) chapter including provisions on internet service provider (ISP) liability, enforcement, cooperation, trademarks and geographical indications (GIs), although difficult issues remain such as copyright term and pharmaceutical provisions, according to a document published by the Mexican government.
The concessions the U.S. cotton industry made in the 2014 farm bill to settle a longstanding trade fight with Brazil are now proving to have rendered growers of the fiber much more vulnerable to a world market that is being battered by a combination of Chinese policies and weak overall demand.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is likely to review, investigate and recommend mitigating measures if the Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) Tsinghua Unigroup offers a formal bid to acquire U.S. semiconductor firm Micron, although the bid may fall through for other reasons, according to industry sources and trade lawyers.
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Despite its claims to be negotiating a trade agreement that will go beyond the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), the European Commission's e-commerce proposal in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) falls substantially short of what World Trade Organization members are discussing in that plurilateral deal -- leaving out provisions on free data flows and even EU-backed...
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The European Union is seeking to include within the Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) commitments on services like the installation and repair of products nominated for tariff elimination under the plurilateral deal, but other participants are insisting that the EGA is not the right forum to do so.
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The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative this month kicked off its annual reviews for two major trade preference programs, the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) and the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which are taking place for the first time since a bill renewing both programs with slight reforms was enacted in June.
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The United States is poised to unravel some of the sanctions it has placed on Iran as a result of the agreement those countries -- along with the European Union, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, China and Russia -- reached last month, but a large swath of U.S. businesses will not be able to take advantage of the commercial benefits that come from lifting those sanctions.
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Chile's top trade official this week told a regular gathering of civil society representatives that 27 out of the 30 chapters that will compose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement have been closed and further confirmed the major outstanding issues relate to intellectual property (IP), market access, and rules of origin.
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Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries are moving toward consensus on a Japanese proposal stipulating that the agreement will enter into force once at least six countries representing 85 percent of the region's economic activity have ratified the deal, according to informed sources.
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08/24/2015
The World Trade Organization's Appellate Body is estimating it will deliver by Nov. 20 of this year a report on the U.S. appeal of the compliance panel decision in the “dolphin-safe” tuna labeling case. The final ruling will be preceded by oral hearings to be held Sept. 21-22 in Geneva, it said in a notice.
08/21/2015
Irish exports of beef to the United States will not be jeopardized by a World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) decision to downgrade Ireland's "mad cow" disease status from "negligible" to "controlled" after a suspected case was reported in the country in June, according to a U.S. official.
08/20/2015
A congressionally chartered research institute is set to complete a study this fall examining how and whether the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) should reorganize its various trade-related offices under a new undersecretary of trade position, after USDA failed to meet a legally mandated deadline to do so last summer.
08/18/2015
The Office of the United States Trade Representative on Tuesday (Aug. 18) asked stakeholders to alert the agency to foreign trade and investment barriers for its annual National Trade Estimate (NTE) report, and to flag trade issues in the telecommunications sector for its separate “Section 1377” review.
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Tentative TPP Deal On GIs Exempts Trade Deals Already Negotiated Or In Force
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries last month reached a tentative agreement on disciplines for geographical indications (GIs) that would require TPP countries seeking to protect new GIs to subject them to a domestic consultation process but would exclude from that requirement any GIs protected under international agreements already in force or already negotiated, according to informed sources.
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