GHY Tradelines

(International Trade Administration)

U.S. Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank today honored 57 U.S. companies and organizations that export goods or services at the 2013 President’s “E” Awards ceremony. This year marks the 51st anniversary of the “E” Awards, which recognize significant contributions to increasing American exports. Today’s set of honorees, many of which are small and medium-sized enterprises, was the largest group in three decades to receive this distinguished award.

“These companies truly represent the spirit of American business and entrepreneurship – bringing some of the best and most innovative products and services to the global marketplace with the sought after ‘Made in the USA’ label,” said Acting Secretary Blank. “Exports continue to be the engine of our economy, supporting nearly 10 million good, high-wage jobs in cities and communities across the country. Furthermore, the success of these exporters reflects historic progress in U.S. export growth. In 2012, U.S. exports hit an all-time high of $2.2 trillion, with record levels of sales to more than 70 trading partners, including major emerging markets and 11 free trade agreement (FTA) partners.” Read more here.
 

(Cillian Donnelly – New Europe)

As the European Parliament votes to endorse a negotiating mandate for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, questions still remain about the transparency surrounding the last major EU trade deal negotiations.

MEPs will debate the FTA, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) today (22 may) and vote for a negotiating mandate on 23 May. One of the things parliament is pushing for is full transparency, and the right to be informed about negotiations as they occur.

However, campaigners are seriously concerned that history may repeat itself following inconsistencies over disclosure, as well as institutional procedure, on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Read more here.
 

(STR Trade Report)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued May 21 a message clarifying that an April 5 policy change concerning waivers of the prior notice requirement for unused merchandise drawback applies to both retroactive and prospective waivers.

Claimants are generally required to submit notice of intent to export or destroy merchandise that may be the subject of unused merchandise drawback prior to export or destruction to give CBP the opportunity to examine the merchandise. CBP currently approves waivers of this requirement for either direct identification unused drawback (19 USC 1313(j)(1)) or substitution unused drawback (19 USC 1313(j)(2).

CBP states that under 19 CFR 191.36 a drawback claimant may request a one-time retroactive waiver (OTW) or a prospective waiver of prior notice (WPN) for drawback under 19 USC 1313(j). Approved waivers covering a specific type of 1313(j) drawback may be amended to include goods covered by another 1313(j) drawback type as long as the exports are still within the allowable statutory timeframe. The existing approval will be updated to include the additional 1313(j) type and will apply to drawback claims that meet the statutory timeframes. Read more here.
 

(Handy Shipping Guide)

Gold Vanishes in Air Cargo Heist Whilst Technology Aids Enforcement

With another massive air cargo crime this week comes good news for road haulage freight truck operators as Heavy Vehicle Electronic License Plate Inc (Help), a not-for-profit public-private partnership dedicated to advancing the safety and efficiency of the transportation industry, has announced that it is to bolster its support of stolen cargo recovery efforts by delivering CargoNet® theft alerts through the Automated Vehicle Identification (AVI) system, PrePass.

Firstly the story of a scheduled American Airlines flight from Guayaquil, Equador into Miami, Florida. The plane was disembarked in the early hours on Tuesday and five cargo handlers unloaded the freight carried aboard. Amongst the items was a single box containing – $625,000 worth of gold. Closed circuit TV has the freight moved to the far side of the aircraft and shortly after shows a cargo tug passing the area, stopping and proceeding out of shot. The tug was found later several gates away and sworn statements from the staff on the tarmac state none know who was driving and, with the gold still missing, the FBI is appealing for information. Read more here.
 

(World Bulletin)

The WTO ruled in late June last year that a U.S. program for labeling imported meat unfairly discriminated against Mexico and Canada.

The United States is not respecting a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling on meat labeling, Mexico’s Agriculture Minister Enrique Martinez said on Tuesday, saying it was hurting local industry.

The WTO ruled in late June last year that a U.S. program for labeling imported meat unfairly discriminated against Mexico and Canada, putting pressure on the United States to bring the scheme in line with global country-of-origin meat-labeling rules.

“We can’t understand why once the very WTO … issues a ruling, the government of the United States does not respect it,” Martinez said.

“We have talked with beef producers in the United States and Canada, and totally agree this is an arbitrary decision and means discrimination against Mexican beef, which we will never agree with and as a government will defend against.” Read more here.
 

(Dean Carroll – Public Service Europe)

The potential free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States could help to spread western norms across the world in an ‘Atlantic century’ as well as creating an open market for 800 million citizens, a senior American diplomat has claimed. In an exclusive interview with PublicServiceEurope.com, the acting deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in London – Mark Tokola – spoke of the “excitement” spreading through diplomatic circles on both sides of the Atlantic.

By providing extra leverage when dealing with third states outside the FTA, the pact could enable Europe and America to demand democratic and human rights improvements at the negotiating table. This would mirror the EU approach used in accession talks and through the neighbourhood policy – whereby those non-European nations wanting to join, or trade with, the union are forced to adopt certain normative standards.

Responding to concerns over the predicted slow progress of the FTA – or ‘transatlantic trade and investment partnership’ as the Americans prefer to call it – Tokola said: “I’m not sure about the validity of that view, we would not have gone into talks if we didn’t think we could conclude the agreement quickly. It will not be easy but we are committed to raising the partnership to the next level.” Read more here.
 

(Monika Ermert – Intellectual Property Watch)

The pace to negotiate bilateral or plurilateral free trade agreements has been accelerating rapidly over the last month as the big trading blocs seem eager to position themselves in the race for market access and standards.

China, Japan and Korea in March hurried to open their first official round of negotiations (CJK), just in time to edge ahead of Japan’s joining the negotiations of an enlarged Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and also ahead of the official start of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) announced by the European Union and the United States earlier this year. Meanwhile, a concerned Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) rushed to counter these ventures with their own competitive bid by starting detailed talks on a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in Brunei Daressalam last Friday.

For years, China and Korea had been reluctant to negotiate the CJK FTA, said Junji Nakagawa, professor of international economic law at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Tokyo. Research on the CJK started in 2003, with an official study begun in 2010 and finalised only last spring. Read more here.
 

(CBSA)

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) announced that the Automated Border Clearance (ABC) program is now available at Terminal 1 of the Toronto Pearson International Airport. While this innovative technology is new to Terminal 1, it has already proven to be enormously successful at Terminal 3 where qualifying arriving passengers have been able to choose an ABC kiosk to streamline a portion of their border clearance process. Read more here.
 

(IndustryWeek – AFP)

Visiting Premier Li Keqiang promised Tuesday to open China’s vast domestic market wider to India and forge a “dynamic trade balance” to deepen economic ties and ease tensions between the Asian giants.

The trade push, which the countries say will supply “new engines” to lift the stumbling global economy, came amid efforts by the nuclear-armed powers to put a military dispute along their contested Himalayan border behind them.

“We have the ability to mitigate the trade imbalance between our two countries,” Li told business leaders in New Delhi, responding to Indian worries over trade that is heavily skewed in China’s favor. “The Chinese side is willing to provide facilitation for more Indian products to access the Chinese market,” added Li, who chose to make India his first foreign stop after taking office two months ago. Read more here.
 

(CBC News)

Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney is leaving Canada with some parting advice – seize the country’s natural advantages.

The central banker said Tuesday in his last scheduled public appearance before departing for the Bank of England next month that Canada can coast and wait out the decade-long damage-repair process in the rest of the G7 economies, or build on its strengths for the emerging new global economy.

Carney said the Canadian government is correct in seeking out new trade deals, particularly in emerging economies, because they represent one half of the world’s imports growth and also are essential to securing a position in global supply chains.

Export growth needed
The speech to the Montreal Board of Trade, notes of which were released in Ottawa, read somewhat like a valedictory address in which the banker was full of praise for the country’s achievements and endowments, while also urging it on to future successes.

Carney broke no new ground in the speech as he has long stressed the need to transition Canada’s exports-based industries from reliance on slow-growing economies like the U.S. and Europe to fast-growing markets in China and Asia in general. But the advice took on added currency given it was likely the last time he will pronounce generally on the Canadian condition for at least the next five years, the term of his posting in London. Read more here.
 

(Ethan Bilby – Reuters)

The European Union wants to exempt state control of utilities and support for creative industries from free trade talks with the United States due to start next month, the latest draft of Brussels’ negotiating mandate showed on Tuesday.

The draft outlines several exceptions that preserve EU states’ control over sensitive sectors, including the power and water industries and government controlled infrastructure and are likely to be the main areas it seeks to cordon off from negotiations.

Senior officials including EU trade chief Karel De Gucht and British Prime Minister David Cameron have called for the bloc to come to the table with a completely open mind and officials say it is unlikely further substantial exemptions will be added. Read more here.
 

(Susan J. Aluise – InvestorPlace)

Sector’s rebound remains vulnerable to shortages, high costs

Shares of trucking companies are on a roll, but that doesn’t mean they might not encounter a few potholes down the road.

Cheaper fuel, rosier unemployment data and continued growth in freight tonnage are among the reasons stocks in the sector have been going strong of late. The American Trucking Association’s seasonally adjusted truck tonnage index, for one, increased slightly in four of the past five months, with February’s 0.7% dip as the only exception.

Many companies are also boosting margins by diversifying revenue streams with brokerage and logistics services. Plus, cross-border freight between the U.S. and Mexico is another growth opportunity. Read more here.
 

(BBC)

Karel De Gucht said that China had to take responsibility for the global trading system, just as the EU did.

Mr De Gucht’s comments come just days after the EU said it may investigate claims that Chinese telecom firms have been paid subsidies, allowing them to flood markets with cheap equipment.

The EU fears illegal payments may give Chinese firms an unfair advantage. [...]

“China has become a very big economy and they have to take responsibility, just as we do, for the global trading system,” Mr De Gucht told the BBC. Read more here.
 

(The Economist)

Container shipping has done more for trade than 50 years of agreements

The humble shipping container is a powerful antidote to economic pessimism and fears of slowing innovation. Although only a simple metal box, it has transformed global trade. In fact, new research suggests that the container has been more of a driver of globalization than all trade agreements in the past 50 years taken together.

Containerization is a testament to the power of process innovation. In the 1950s the world’s ports still did business much as they had for centuries. When ships moored, hordes of longshoremen unloaded “break bulk” cargo crammed into the hold. They then squeezed outbound cargo in as efficiently as possible in a game of maritime Tetris. The process was expensive and slow; most ships spent much more time tied up than plying the seas. And theft was rampant: a dock worker was said to earn “$20 a day and all the Scotch you could carry home.”

Containerization changed everything. It was the brainchild of Malcom McLean, an American trucking magnate. Read more here.
 

(European Commission)

In 2012, a total of 2,278 measures against dangerous non-food products, were taken by Member States and reported in the EU Rapid Information system (RAPEX). This indicates a 26% rise in alerts when compared to 2011 figures, an increase that could be attributed to the improved enforcement work carried out by the authorities in EU countries.

RAPEX is the EU rapid alert system between Member States and the Commission on non-food products. Its role is to disseminate information quickly on potentially dangerous consumer products. This allows for earlier identification and earlier removal from EU markets of products that could pose a risk to consumers, such as children’s clothing, textiles and electrical appliances which do not meet safety standards. [...]

In 2012, clothing, textiles and fashion items (34%), followed by toys (19%), were the main product categories for which corrective measures had to be taken. Among the most frequently notified risks caused by these products were chemical risks, risk of strangulation and risk of injury. Read more here.
 

(Stanley Lubman – WSJ)

If a diner in the U.S. consumes a lunch of tilapia, mushrooms and spinach, there’s a decent chance the entire meal was imported from China. And the overwhelming odds are that none of those foods were inspected by the Food and Drug Administration when they arrived in the U.S.

This week’s revelation that nearly half the rice sold in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou was found to be tainted with cadmium is just the latest in a long string of eye-catching stories that illustrate the dangers of eating in China. But lost in the exhaustive media coverage of the polluted foods that find their way on to Chinese tables are serious questions about what happens — or doesn’t happen — when Chinese food products make their way into the U.S.

Chinese food product imports to the U.S. are continuing to rise, but inspections in both China and the U.S. aren’t keeping pace, posing a growing danger to consumers. Many of the imports are used by restaurants, institutions and food processors; as a result, consumers see no labels, keeping them unaware of the origins of what they’re ingesting. Read more here.
 

(Alex Lennane – The Loadstar)

The air freight market is currently in a weak yet stable condition, according to carriers and consultancies. Drewry’s east-west air freight price index for April revealed that all-in rates (for standard deferred airport-to-airport services), over 21 major routes, rose slightly to $3.21 from $3.15 in March, but were down year-on-year.

Interestingly, perhaps, one of the sharpest rebounds in pricing was on the Shanghai-Frankfurt route. Drewry’s index saw it rise 13.8% in April.

“China is recovering,” said a spokesman for Lufthansa Cargo. “We’ve increased the frequency to Shanghai, but the market is still unspectacular – we don’t expect a real recovery until the second half.” Read more here.
 

(DJ Pangburn – Motherboard)

The Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, is up for a vote in the European Parliament this Wednesday, May 22. TAFTA is a free trade area proposal between the European Union and the United States. It aims to open up trade between the US’s NAFTA bloc and the EU bloc (EFTA), boosting overall trade by up to 50 percent.

US and EU leaders claim that the trade agreement is vital to lift their respective economic zones out of recession. However, like ACTA, SOPA and PIPA before it, the negotiations, which were held in secret, resulted in more copyright and patent trade regulation—without public stakeholder input. In other words, US and EU citizens can neither see the text of nor vote on TAFTA. Many of the trade agreement’s provisions apparently derive from ACTA, Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which was voted down last year in the EUP.

The operating principle of international copyright law might as well be this: never put all of your eggs in one basket. Dispersion is the key—multiple fronts of attack, one after another. Activists and critics will see the maneuvers; but, as with any war of attrition, the opposition’s momentum dissipates. And the majority of the world’s population are fully ignorant of international affairs, dazzled as they are by technological titillation, reality TV, political theater, etc. In that ignorance lies the ability to pass trade agreements like TAFTA. Read more here.
 

(Charles Kenny – Bloomberg)

Over the past few weeks, much has been made about the transatlantic trade pact President Obama proposed in his State of the Union address, as well as the announcement that Japan will join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the U.S. hopes to wrap up this year. Largely overlooked, however, was another development in the area of trade: the leadership contest for the post of the World Trade Organization’s director general. The winning candidate, Brazil’s Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo, managed to secure the closed-door consensus that passes for a selection procedure with milquetoast statements designed to offend no one.

The lack of excitement about Azevêdo’s appointment reflects the extent to which the WTO has been marginalized in favor of trade regionalism. That’s a real problem for the U.S.: Regional approaches can’t handle a lot of the country’s most significant trade issues. The World Trade Organization, meanwhile, remains vital to national and global economic prospects. Read more here.
 

(Inautonews.com)

Automakers support the free-trade deal between the EU and the US, as they want auto safety regulations to be the same on both sides.

In 2012 the vehicle and auto parts trade between the US and the US was $57 billion, accounting for 9% of the total of $646 billion in US-EU trade. The Association of Global Automakers, which represents important luxury companies and automakers, said that the US and the EU should have the same regulations on fuel system integrity, child restraint systems, occupant and side-impact crash protection, vehicle emissions and tire-pressure monitors and bumpers. Read more here.