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
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.
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