GHY Tradelines

span style=”font-size:85%;”(The Canadian Press)/spanbr /br /The Globe and Mail says Chrysler Canada Inc. is turning up the heat on the federal and Ontario governments in its quest for financial help.br /br /The newspaper reports the automaker is warning that it could close its two assembly plants in Canada if the two governments fail to provide $1.6-billion in emergency aid.br /br /The work at the plants could then be transferred to the U-S, with the total loss of 8,000 direct jobs in the Ontario communities of Windsor and Brampton.br /br /The Globe says Chrysler spells out the grim prospects for its Canadian operations in its restructuring proposal filed with government officials last week.br /br /Together, the Canadian operations of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors are seeking a $6-billion lifeline from Ottawa and Ontario.br /br /U-S lawmakers reached a deal yesterday that would give their Detroit-based parent companies a $15-billion aid package, though terms of the proposed pact are still being worked out.br /br /Government and industry sources in Canada have worried that the U-S government will attach strings to its final aid package that, in the absence of Canadian assistance, would favour the companies’ operations south of the border.

span style=”font-size:85%;”(Reuters)/spanbr /br /All European Union airlines will be able to fly directly to Canada from anywhere in the bloc under a coming aviation deal that also scraps investment curbs in the sector, the EU’s executive arm said on Tuesday.br /br /EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said the 27-nation bloc and Canada had made a breakthrough in talks on the agreement, which would remove restrictions on routes, prices and the number of weekly flights between Canada and the EU.br /br /“The new agreement makes the EU-Canada market one of the most open in the world and is a milestone for EU-Canada relations,” Tajani said in a statement.br /br /Under the planned accord, EU nationals will be able to establish aviation operations in Canada and freely invest in Canadian airlines and vice versa.br /br /The deal is also meant to ensure that EU and Canadian air carriers would not be discriminated against in access to local infrastructure or state subsidies.br /br /It removes many hassles for air travelers. Transfer passengers, luggage and cargo are to be exempted from any additional security measures when traveling to and from Canada, the Commission said.

span style=”font-size:85%;”(World Trade Interactive)/spanbr /br /U.S. Customs and Border Protection is demanding that U.S. companies return within 30 days certain distributions of antidumping and countervailing duty revenues they received under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act. Earlier this year a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that the CDSOA (the so-called Byrd Amendment), which required CBP to distribute AD/CV duty revenues to affected U.S. producers, did not apply to imports from Canada and Mexico. As a result, CBP is now seeking the repayment of tens of millions of dollars in AD/CV duties assessed on products imported from those two countries that were distributed in 2003, 2004 and 2005.br /br /The Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports wrote to CBP December 4 urging the agency to withdraw these letters or at least extend the compliance date by 60 days “to enable the Executive Branch to reconsider the demand for repayment.” The letter asserted that the repayment requests are improper because CBP represented to the Court of International Trade that repayment would be inappropriate and the CIT rejected a request that repayment be required, stating that “[w]hen the government grants or distributes money to parties, those parties have some right to rely on that money they receive.” The coalition added that the timing of CBP’s repayment requests, amid “the depths of the nation’s worst building and housing crises in decades,” could not be more harmful.