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 $1 billion has been doled out to US ball bearing, steel, seafood, candle and other companies under the Byrd Amendment over the past four years. Canada is expected to announce similar measures against the United States, its top trading partner, later on Thursday.
Mostly textiles: Most of the products to be hit with the EU’s extra duty relate to textiles — trousers and overalls made of synthetic fibres, for example. The only agricultural item is sweetcorn.
Five areas of stationery are also targeted, while in the machinery sector the products listed are crane lorries, along with spectacle frames and mountings. reuters
Last week, another earthquake hit the area where the tsunami destroyed so much a few months ago.
The international press kept saying how the UNITED STATES hadn't done enough to establish tsunami warning systems in the area and it's all the USA's fault - Bush's Fault - Greedy American's Fault!
When we get involved - a'la Afghanistan and Iraq - we're wrong.
When we don't get involved, we're wrong.
Can't win the hearts of those without common sense. So - !#@$'em.
What is this, the equivalent of about 15 minutes of one day's trade?? Sheesh. Yeah, that's REALLY gonna bite us hard, EU.
"Maybe instead of propping up the unsustainable they need a little tough love to quit using the US as a scapegoat for their own self created problems."
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You're probably right but I can't imagine us doing anything worse to them than they are already doing to themselves. It's unfortunate that they refuse to reform their nanny states because we need them as a functioning trading partner
Actually, the Europeans are absolutely right here. Free trade only works when the trade is in fact free. The US is socialistically subsidizing these industries, which unfairly hurts European competitors. Its no more appropriate for us to do that than it is for China or Japan to subsidize their companies when they undercut American jobs and businesses. No more socialism for anybody.
Countries like Poland are already taking away German and French jobs because they are a lot more business friendly, that's why the surrender monkeys are turning sour on the EU constitution.
No more socialism for anybody.
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I agree -- that dimension of this deal, the governmental subsidizing OF ANY INDUSTRY must stop. This include the so-called farm susidies, etc.
Industry and business MUST STAND ON ITS OWN TWO FEET. Again I agree -- NO MORE SOCIALISM.
This is a familiar line spewed out by proponents of Free Trade. First of all, America prospered far greater in the economic expansion of the Reagan years then it did during the economic expansion of the post-NAFTA/GATT/WTO agreements of the mid-90s.
Secondly, Free Trade is an instrumental element of marxist dogma which Marx and Lennin spoke at length about. Deal with it-you support a key element in communist foreign policy.
Everything that needs to be said about this is in post #117.
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Check that. Post #118 says it all!!!
Nice try, but I never said every member of OPEC was in the WTO. So why doesn't the US take the member nations to the WTO? Colusion to fix prices is 100% against the notion of a free and fair market system, an anethma to Free Trade. Yet the US oblivious to this simple fact. Secondly, the fact that there is colusion to fix both prices and production shoots to s$it your little theory about oil being a commodity that is priced due to supply and demand. Maybe you weren't old enough to remember when oil was used as a strategic weapon against the US back in the '70s. Commodity, right. That's a good one. Maybe you spent too much time listening to some marxist professor in college.
But you probably didn't know that did you? Yes, most of the Cocaine had to be flown into the US but now with NAFTA they just drive it right over the border! Yep, it sure was a deal to give up our border for cheap goods and labor from Mexico!
Wait, I forgot, NAFTA did cause jobs in the US to increase for rehab clincs!
Your concern for Mexico is touching.
Check it out. Our colleague thinks oil is not a commodity. I wonder what it is, then? Maybe something that is produced in refineries?
Whatever other arguments can be brought to bear, this move will be inflationary for the EU. Not what they need.
Oops. Check under 'C,' if the alphabet is a problem.
Then you must think that Central Planning is a capitalist doctrine. Also that Adam Smith was a socialist. And Ronald Reagan.
What think you of the concept of a free market?
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