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
Fine...I'll just buy more crap from China. D'oh!
What a shame.
Free-Trade bump!!!
Canada to put trade surtax on U.S. goodsFrom wire reports
OTTAWA — The Canadian government Thursday said it will slap a 15% surtax on some U.S. products in retaliation for a lingering trade dispute. The retaliatory surtax will amount to $11.6 million this year.
The announcement of the surtax on cigarettes, oysters and live swine from the USA came just as the European Union took a similar measure.
Canada is joining countries from around the world protesting a U.S. trade measure known as the Byrd amendment, which the World Trade Organization has deemed illegal.
The Byrd amendment allows American companies to keep the proceeds that Washington collects in anti-dumping disputes, something Canada and other countries complain unfairly enriches their U.S. rival firms.
"For the last four years, Canada and a number of other countries have repeatedly urged the United States to repeal the Byrd amendment," Canadian International Trade Minister Jim Peterson said in a statement Thursday.
"Retaliation is not our preferred option, but it is a necessary action. International trade rules must be respected."
The Canadian sanctions, which also cover certain types of fish, are to take effect May 1.
The EU says it will slap duties of up to 15%, also on May 1, on such U.S. imports as paper, textiles, machinery and farm produce.
The 25-member EU said it took that action "in light of the continuing failure of the United States to bring its legislation in conformity with its international obligations."
Both Canada and the EU have long asked Washington to repeal the Byrd amendment.
In November, the WTO gave Canada and the other co-complainants the authority to retaliate. The other countries involved include Mexico, Japan, India and Brazil.
The developments come a day after the Bush administration cited a total of 58 countries and three trading areas for erecting significant trade barriers that harm U.S. manufacturers and farmers.
As usual, the report devoted the most coverage to China, a total of 58 pages, but included countries from Angola to Vietnam.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/trade/2005-03-31-trade-usat_x.htm
OK, now it is time to hit them with a 25% tariff on goods. Trade is a TWO-WAY STREET but the idiots in the EU have not figured that out yet -- so let's show them.
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.
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!
With the extra duties and the new RoHS regulations going into efect in 2006; I wonder of some companies will just stop selling into the EU. Better of selling goods in Asia.
Japan, Mexico Prepare to Follow EU, Canada Sanctions on U.S.
April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Japan and Mexico are preparing to follow the European Union and Canada in imposing extra import duties on U.S. goods after Congress failed to repeal a law that has handed companies such as Timken Co. more than $1 billion in tariffs paid by their competitors.
The Byrd Amendment, first ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization in September 2002, was introduced in 2000 to compensate U.S. industries hurt by foreign goods ``dumped'' at below-market prices. It prompted complaints by a record number of countries at the 10-year-old WTO.
Unless Congress repeals the law, the case may become the most damaging ever at the WTO when the U.S. begins distributing tariffs collected on Canadian lumber, worth $4 billion a year. Japan, the economy most affected by the Byrd Amendment, has the right to impose customs duties worth 125 billion yen ($116 million), the biggest sanctions awarded to Japan in a dispute.
``We have not yet decided when our retaliation measures will be invoked,'' said Kunihiko Kawazu, first counselor at Japan's mission to the WTO in Geneva. ``We have already been authorized to do so at any time, but we will make a judgment taking into account how the discussion in Congress goes on repealing the Byrd Amendment.''
The EU and Canada said yesterday they will impose an extra 15 percent duty on a combined $40 million worth of U.S. imports, including some types of American stationery, clothing, live swine, cigarettes and oysters, beginning May 1.
Choosing Targets
Mexico is deciding which U.S. products will be targeted, said Fernando de Mateo, the country's ambassador to the WTO.
``We're analyzing with what we're going to retaliate,'' he said. ``The problem is not revenge; the problem is you cannot have your cake and eat it. This amendment provides an incentive for producers to say `my neighbor is hurting me.'''
Mexican President Vicente Fox will decide when to apply the sanctions, de Mateo said, adding that he was uncertain about the timing of any decision.
``Japan will move slowly, but ultimately it will move,'' said Lewis Leibowitz, a trade attorney with Hogan & Hartson LLP in Washington and legal counsel to Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition, an organization lobbying for the Byrd Amendment's repeal that counts Caterpillar Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., Emerson Electric Co. and Nissan North America Inc. among its members.
``Retaliation alone is not going to do this,'' he said. ``If the softwood lumber duties start to get distributed, then retaliation would be huge, but while that's a good reason to repeal, the better reason is that it's a bad law.''
`Dislocations'
The law hurts the U.S. economy by creating ``dislocations'' and it acts as an incentive both to file cases at the WTO and to keep sanctions in place, Leibowitz said. U.S. President George W. Bush called for a repeal of the Byrd Amendment in his budget proposal to Congress on Feb. 7, saying that ending the law could save the U.S. Treasury $1.6 billion in the next fiscal year.
``Retaliation heightens the visibility of the law in Congress,'' says Steve Alexander, CITAC's executive director. ``Imposing retaliation gives credibility to the idea that the law is having a negative impact on the U.S. economy.''
The WTO gave the EU, Canada, Brazil, Japan, India, South Korea and Mexico the right to retaliate against the U.S. law on Nov. 27. Chile won the right to strike back on Dec. 17.
Double Punishment
In their complaints, the governments said the law enables the U.S. to punish exporters twice -- first by imposing a duty and then by giving the money collected to the exporter's rivals. After the U.S. missed an end-2003 deadline for compliance, the WTO authorized governments to impose retaliatory duties on U.S. goods equal to 72 percent of the total paid by their companies.
The European tariffs, worth about $28 million, add to trans- Atlantic trade tensions as the EU and U.S. battle over aid for aircraft makers Airbus SAS and Boeing Co., the EU challenges tax breaks for U.S. exporters worth $4 billion a year and the U.S. fights European resistance to new gene-engineered crops.
U.S. makers of steel, ball bearings, honey and candles are the main beneficiaries of the Byrd Amendment. Total payouts to the U.S. companies would rise as high as $1.6 billion this fiscal year unless the law is repealed, the EU has said.
>> United States to bring its legislation in conformity with its international obligations
What international obligations are you referring to? Certainly not NAFTA and GATT since they are unconstitutional treaties (the constitution requires supermajority approval by the Senate for treaty ratificaation). Again, what obligations are you referring to?
a package of 34 treaties, all of which were ratified by a show of hands -- no recorded vote.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a325b3f5d31.htm
Annan in historic meeting with Supreme Court &Congress/is believed to be unprecedented.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b0c30a81760.htm
The United States has signed agreements and the rest of the world expects it to live up to its word, just as the U.S. should and does expect the rest of the world to live up to theirs.
The issue here is that the Byrd Amendment, and some other unilateral actions, have the U.S. not living up to their end of the deals signed. If the Europeans aren't living up to their end, slap trade sanctions on them too. If we in Canada aren't, do the same to us. But we do live up to our word on trade and we expect the U.S. to do likewise.
NAFTA and GATT,wto are part ot the U.N
The United States needs to get out of signed agreements
And what does this say? That the world is trying to tell the US how it will conduct its world trade, what prices will be paid, and what access they can have to our markets??
I guess it gets down to who is trying to blackmail who -- the world depends on the economy of the US to sell much of its goods -- yet they think they can tell us how we are going to operate, what they can do to us, etc.
IMHO, the WTO was a bad idea to begin with.
I suppose the only way to balance this out is to give them a few thousand IT tech jobs. Apparently, the more jobs we give to other countries, the better off we are here at home.
28 million? this is hardly worth mention in the news... who cares if the euroweenies want to act tough over 28 million dollars...
China makes comsumer crap. Ask any engineer what they would do if trade with the EU in for instance machine tools were to be halted. Chaos.
EU, we can take you down Any Day in Any Kind of War.
You want a Trade War?? You got it! Wanna bet whose economies fall?? Can you spell Euroweenies??
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