Trump’s New World Order
TRUMP’S NEW WORLD ORDER: Donald Trump took another step toward blowing up the TPP in his speech accepting the Republican Party nomination on Thursday, declaring the United States will no longer join big trade agreements and concentrate instead on enforcing and renegotiating existing trade pacts.
"No longer will we enter into these massive transactions, with many countries," Trump told the crowd, setting down a marker that also raises doubt about the future of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, although he did not mention the proposed pact with the European Union by name. "We are going to enforce all trade violations against any country that cheats."
“Our horrible trade agreements with China and many others will be totally renegotiated,” Trump continued, apparently referring to the 1999 deal that paved the way for China to join the WTO since the United States does not have an individual trade deal with the Asian heavyweight. “That includes renegotiating NAFTA to get a much better deal for America — and we'll walk away if we don't get that kind of a deal. Our country is going to start building and making things again."
"I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers, or that diminishes our freedom and independence," Trump said in the speech, which also attacked his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, for past support of trade deals. "We will never, ever sign bad trade deals. America first again. ... Instead, I will make individual deals with individual countries."
He also made a play for Bernie Sanders supporters, predicting they will join his movement “because we will fix his biggest issue: trade.”
‘ NOBODY DOES IT BETTER, MAKES ME FEEL SAD FOR THE REST’ : Although Trump cast one-on-one trade agreements as a new idea, that was largely the approach used by the George W. Bush administration, which negotiated bilateral deals with Singapore, Chile, Morocco, Australia, Bahrain, Oman, Peru, Colombia, Panama and South Korea, as well as a regional trade pact with five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic. Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, should know, since he voted for nearly all of them in Congress.
But Trump insisted he could do it better. “It’s been a signature message of my campaign from Day One, and it will be a signature feature of my presidency from the moment I take the oath of office. I have made billions of dollars in business making deals. Now I’m going to make our country rich again. Using the greatest business people in the world, which our country has, I am going to turn our bad trade agreements into great trade agreements.”
TPP AT THE DNC : The remnants of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign will continue to press the erstwhile candidate’s issues during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next week with a number of issues forums for delegates. That includes a session on Monday strategizing TPP’s defeat if it comes up in a lame-duck session of Congress. At that meeting, delegates will also be encouraged to bring up TPP at the daily state breakfast meetings, which are key events at the convention for delegates to talk about various issues with each other and elected officials. Monday will also include forums on health care and racial equality, culminating in Sanders speaking to the delegates.
“We didn’t map this campaign just around Bernie being the nominee or not,” one Sanders-supporting delegate told POLITICO. “We built it around being a movement, what he calls a political revolution, and that’s issue based, not just candidate based.”
STEEL INDUSTRY GETS A LITTLE MORE RELIEF : The Commerce Department approved wide-ranging final duties on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cold-rolled steel products from Brazil, India, Korea, Russia and the United Kingdom to offset unfairly low pricing and government subsidies.
The department late Thursday set anti-dumping duties ranging from 10 percent to 32 percent on Brazil, about 8 percent on India, about 6 percent to 34 percent on South Korea, 1 percent to 13 percent on Russia and about 5 percent to 26 percent on the United Kingdom. It also set additional countervailing duties of around 11 percent on Brazil, 10 percent on India, 4 percent to 58 percent on South Korea and 1 percent to 7 percent on Russia.
Duties below 1 percent for developed countries and 2 percent for developing countries are not collected.
South Korea was the largest of the five suppliers in 2014, shipping $206 million of the cold-rolled steel to the United States that year. The United Kingdom was second, with $132 million in cold-rolled steel exports to the United States in 2014
The duties on the United Kingdom stand out because they are the first the United States has imposed on that country since 2001, said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Those earlier duties, on stainless steel bar, were removed in 2007, "so the U.S. has not had any anti-dumping import restrictions imposed against the U.K. in almost 10 years," Bown said in an email.
"This is obviously symptomatic of the global steel glut — even though these other exporting countries may not have been instigators of the global overcapacity problem, they are now also going to be caught up in it," Bown said.
The U.S. International Trade Commission still has to give final approval for the duties. That vote is set for early September.
LAWMAKERS: U.S., EU SHOULD WORK CLOSER ON ENFORCEMENT: Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Sander Levin want the U.S. and European Union to work closer on trade enforcement matters, especially when it comes to the “unique challenges posed by continued market distorting behavior in China.”
The Democratic lawmakers, who serve as ranking members in their chamber’s respective trade committees, say in a letter that China’s WTO accession agreement does not require countries to grant market economy status to the communist country and urge the two sides to work together on this issue. The EU, however, is moving toward granting the status to China but may change its anti-dumping methodology in response.
On trade remedies, the lawmakers urge enforcement to be built in to the agenda for future engagement, “including a commitment to regular technical discussions on enforcement-related matters, and cooperation on trade remedies enforcement relating to third country dumping and subsidization.”
In their letter, the lawmakers also support the recent U.S. decision to block the reappointment of a WTO Appellate Body member, arguing that he overreached on certain cases. The EU opposed the action, saying it risked undermining the judicial independence of the body.
WATCHDOG GROUPS WANT REVIEW OF SYNGENTA ACQUISITION : Food and Water Watch and the National Farmers Union laid out in detail why the proposed acquisition of agrichemical and seed company Syngenta by China National Chemical Corporation, also known as ChemChina, should be subject to a full national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.
“The proposed takeover of a major seed and agricultural chemical company poses significant potential threats to U.S. security interests; undermines food security in the United States and worldwide; disrupts trade flows; and accelerates the international consolidation of the food and agribusiness industries to the detriment of American farmers, rural communities, and consumers,” the groups wrote in an 18-page letter sent Thursday to nine Cabinet members.
U.S. WINS FIGHT OVER WTO JUDGE: Looks like South Korea will have to accept that its former World Trade Organization Appellate Body member, Seung Wha Chang, won’t be retaking his seat on the panel anytime soon.
Geneva sources say World Trade Organization members agreed Thursday to move ahead with finding someone else for the spot. The decision is a victory for Washington, which refused to reappoint Chang in May, arguing the appeals panel's decisions went beyond its legal scope during his tenure.
The WTO will accept nominations for the now officially open spot until Sept. 14 and make a final recommendation in November, the sources said.
STRAINED CASELOAD : Chang’s seat isn’t the only one that needs to be filled. China’s Yuejiao Zhang reached the end of her two-term limit on May 31, leaving a second vacancy on the seven-member appeals panel. Given the limited staff, South Korea ultimately didn’t object to the WTO’s decision to seek another candidate, recognizing that the WTO’s resource constraints have already created a backlog of cases, with three appeals still pending and four more expected in the next few months.
But the Asian country and other WTO members, including the European Union, sharply criticized the Obama administration’s move, saying it would set a precedent for undermining the independence and impartiality of the panel’s members.
CHALLENGES TO U.S. SUBSIDIES ADVANCE: But the Obama administration also took a couple of lumps in Geneva on Thursday. The WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body agreed to put together a panel to examine whether Washington complied fully with a previous ruling that faulted U.S. countervailing duties on more than a dozen cases covering Chinese steel pipes, solar cells and other major imports.
While Washington recalculated the duties after the initial ruling, China has argued the re-investigations haven’t addressed its concerns about whether the products in question, which span more than a dozen cases, met the criteria for the “subsidized” label.
NOT SO SMOOTH : In its second setback of the day, the Obama administration also lost ground to Canada when the WTO granted Ottawa’s request for a compliance panel in a case challenging U.S. countervailing duties on imports of "supercalendared" paper — those glossy sheets used in newspaper and magazine inserts.
Canada is arguing that the U.S. decision to apply anti-subsidy duties on the paper was based on Canadian programs that supported other products. Ottawa also faults Commerce’s decision to calculate duties on “adverse facts available,” which often results in higher tariffs when the department determines that the targeted companies are not fully cooperating with the investigation.
If the WTO challenge doesn’t work out for Canada, it still has other recourse: Ottawa is also fighting the duties under NAFTA’s dispute system.
CANADA DISPUTE PROPOSAL GETS NEW SUPPORT : In other DSB news, Canada is gaining more allies in its quest to streamline and strengthen the World Trade Organization’s strained dispute settlement system. Last month, Ottawa put forward proposals outlining voluntary procedural improvements that would improve information sharing and set deadlines for submitting questions, among other things.
Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, the European Union, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, Uruguay, Ukraine and Vietnam now endorse Canada’s voluntary approach for improving the dispute process, according to Geneva sources.
source
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-tra...der-215477
TRUMP’S NEW WORLD ORDER: Donald Trump took another step toward blowing up the TPP in his speech accepting the Republican Party nomination on Thursday, declaring the United States will no longer join big trade agreements and concentrate instead on enforcing and renegotiating existing trade pacts.
"No longer will we enter into these massive transactions, with many countries," Trump told the crowd, setting down a marker that also raises doubt about the future of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, although he did not mention the proposed pact with the European Union by name. "We are going to enforce all trade violations against any country that cheats."
“Our horrible trade agreements with China and many others will be totally renegotiated,” Trump continued, apparently referring to the 1999 deal that paved the way for China to join the WTO since the United States does not have an individual trade deal with the Asian heavyweight. “That includes renegotiating NAFTA to get a much better deal for America — and we'll walk away if we don't get that kind of a deal. Our country is going to start building and making things again."
"I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers, or that diminishes our freedom and independence," Trump said in the speech, which also attacked his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, for past support of trade deals. "We will never, ever sign bad trade deals. America first again. ... Instead, I will make individual deals with individual countries."
He also made a play for Bernie Sanders supporters, predicting they will join his movement “because we will fix his biggest issue: trade.”
‘ NOBODY DOES IT BETTER, MAKES ME FEEL SAD FOR THE REST’ : Although Trump cast one-on-one trade agreements as a new idea, that was largely the approach used by the George W. Bush administration, which negotiated bilateral deals with Singapore, Chile, Morocco, Australia, Bahrain, Oman, Peru, Colombia, Panama and South Korea, as well as a regional trade pact with five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic. Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, should know, since he voted for nearly all of them in Congress.
But Trump insisted he could do it better. “It’s been a signature message of my campaign from Day One, and it will be a signature feature of my presidency from the moment I take the oath of office. I have made billions of dollars in business making deals. Now I’m going to make our country rich again. Using the greatest business people in the world, which our country has, I am going to turn our bad trade agreements into great trade agreements.”
TPP AT THE DNC : The remnants of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign will continue to press the erstwhile candidate’s issues during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next week with a number of issues forums for delegates. That includes a session on Monday strategizing TPP’s defeat if it comes up in a lame-duck session of Congress. At that meeting, delegates will also be encouraged to bring up TPP at the daily state breakfast meetings, which are key events at the convention for delegates to talk about various issues with each other and elected officials. Monday will also include forums on health care and racial equality, culminating in Sanders speaking to the delegates.
“We didn’t map this campaign just around Bernie being the nominee or not,” one Sanders-supporting delegate told POLITICO. “We built it around being a movement, what he calls a political revolution, and that’s issue based, not just candidate based.”
STEEL INDUSTRY GETS A LITTLE MORE RELIEF : The Commerce Department approved wide-ranging final duties on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cold-rolled steel products from Brazil, India, Korea, Russia and the United Kingdom to offset unfairly low pricing and government subsidies.
The department late Thursday set anti-dumping duties ranging from 10 percent to 32 percent on Brazil, about 8 percent on India, about 6 percent to 34 percent on South Korea, 1 percent to 13 percent on Russia and about 5 percent to 26 percent on the United Kingdom. It also set additional countervailing duties of around 11 percent on Brazil, 10 percent on India, 4 percent to 58 percent on South Korea and 1 percent to 7 percent on Russia.
Duties below 1 percent for developed countries and 2 percent for developing countries are not collected.
South Korea was the largest of the five suppliers in 2014, shipping $206 million of the cold-rolled steel to the United States that year. The United Kingdom was second, with $132 million in cold-rolled steel exports to the United States in 2014
The duties on the United Kingdom stand out because they are the first the United States has imposed on that country since 2001, said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Those earlier duties, on stainless steel bar, were removed in 2007, "so the U.S. has not had any anti-dumping import restrictions imposed against the U.K. in almost 10 years," Bown said in an email.
"This is obviously symptomatic of the global steel glut — even though these other exporting countries may not have been instigators of the global overcapacity problem, they are now also going to be caught up in it," Bown said.
The U.S. International Trade Commission still has to give final approval for the duties. That vote is set for early September.
LAWMAKERS: U.S., EU SHOULD WORK CLOSER ON ENFORCEMENT: Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Sander Levin want the U.S. and European Union to work closer on trade enforcement matters, especially when it comes to the “unique challenges posed by continued market distorting behavior in China.”
The Democratic lawmakers, who serve as ranking members in their chamber’s respective trade committees, say in a letter that China’s WTO accession agreement does not require countries to grant market economy status to the communist country and urge the two sides to work together on this issue. The EU, however, is moving toward granting the status to China but may change its anti-dumping methodology in response.
On trade remedies, the lawmakers urge enforcement to be built in to the agenda for future engagement, “including a commitment to regular technical discussions on enforcement-related matters, and cooperation on trade remedies enforcement relating to third country dumping and subsidization.”
In their letter, the lawmakers also support the recent U.S. decision to block the reappointment of a WTO Appellate Body member, arguing that he overreached on certain cases. The EU opposed the action, saying it risked undermining the judicial independence of the body.
WATCHDOG GROUPS WANT REVIEW OF SYNGENTA ACQUISITION : Food and Water Watch and the National Farmers Union laid out in detail why the proposed acquisition of agrichemical and seed company Syngenta by China National Chemical Corporation, also known as ChemChina, should be subject to a full national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.
“The proposed takeover of a major seed and agricultural chemical company poses significant potential threats to U.S. security interests; undermines food security in the United States and worldwide; disrupts trade flows; and accelerates the international consolidation of the food and agribusiness industries to the detriment of American farmers, rural communities, and consumers,” the groups wrote in an 18-page letter sent Thursday to nine Cabinet members.
U.S. WINS FIGHT OVER WTO JUDGE: Looks like South Korea will have to accept that its former World Trade Organization Appellate Body member, Seung Wha Chang, won’t be retaking his seat on the panel anytime soon.
Geneva sources say World Trade Organization members agreed Thursday to move ahead with finding someone else for the spot. The decision is a victory for Washington, which refused to reappoint Chang in May, arguing the appeals panel's decisions went beyond its legal scope during his tenure.
The WTO will accept nominations for the now officially open spot until Sept. 14 and make a final recommendation in November, the sources said.
STRAINED CASELOAD : Chang’s seat isn’t the only one that needs to be filled. China’s Yuejiao Zhang reached the end of her two-term limit on May 31, leaving a second vacancy on the seven-member appeals panel. Given the limited staff, South Korea ultimately didn’t object to the WTO’s decision to seek another candidate, recognizing that the WTO’s resource constraints have already created a backlog of cases, with three appeals still pending and four more expected in the next few months.
But the Asian country and other WTO members, including the European Union, sharply criticized the Obama administration’s move, saying it would set a precedent for undermining the independence and impartiality of the panel’s members.
CHALLENGES TO U.S. SUBSIDIES ADVANCE: But the Obama administration also took a couple of lumps in Geneva on Thursday. The WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body agreed to put together a panel to examine whether Washington complied fully with a previous ruling that faulted U.S. countervailing duties on more than a dozen cases covering Chinese steel pipes, solar cells and other major imports.
While Washington recalculated the duties after the initial ruling, China has argued the re-investigations haven’t addressed its concerns about whether the products in question, which span more than a dozen cases, met the criteria for the “subsidized” label.
NOT SO SMOOTH : In its second setback of the day, the Obama administration also lost ground to Canada when the WTO granted Ottawa’s request for a compliance panel in a case challenging U.S. countervailing duties on imports of "supercalendared" paper — those glossy sheets used in newspaper and magazine inserts.
Canada is arguing that the U.S. decision to apply anti-subsidy duties on the paper was based on Canadian programs that supported other products. Ottawa also faults Commerce’s decision to calculate duties on “adverse facts available,” which often results in higher tariffs when the department determines that the targeted companies are not fully cooperating with the investigation.
If the WTO challenge doesn’t work out for Canada, it still has other recourse: Ottawa is also fighting the duties under NAFTA’s dispute system.
CANADA DISPUTE PROPOSAL GETS NEW SUPPORT : In other DSB news, Canada is gaining more allies in its quest to streamline and strengthen the World Trade Organization’s strained dispute settlement system. Last month, Ottawa put forward proposals outlining voluntary procedural improvements that would improve information sharing and set deadlines for submitting questions, among other things.
Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, the European Union, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, Uruguay, Ukraine and Vietnam now endorse Canada’s voluntary approach for improving the dispute process, according to Geneva sources.
source
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-tra...der-215477
