GHY Tradelines

(Journal of Commerce – Mark Szakonyi)

Surface trade by value rose 9.8 percent from February, 6.2 percent year-over-year

The value of surface transportation trade between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico hit a monthly record in March, topping $85.7 million.

Trade by value between the countries rose 9.8% from February and 6.2% year-over-year, according to the Department of Transportation. U.S surface trade with Canada and Mexico has risen 76.1% since March 2002, as exports jumped 104.5% in the same period. Read more here.
 

(Toronto Star – Vanessa Lu)

Canadian Pacific Railway trains won’t be rolling until Friday at the earliest, even though the House of Commons sat into the wee hours of Wednesday to pass back-to-work legislation.

About 4,800 members of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference including engineers, conductors and rail traffic controllers have been on strike since May 23, shutting down CP Rail operations from Montreal to Vancouver. Main issues include pensions, post-retirement benefits and fatigue management.

The Conservative government used its majority to limit debate in the House, where Bill C39 passed just before 1:30 a.m. The Senate, which usually requires 48 hours’ notice before debating a bill, will hold hearings on Thursday. The legislation, which calls for an arbitrator to settle the contract dispute, could pass later that day, and after royal assent, it would go into effect 12 hours later. Read more here.
 

(Dow Jones/WSJ)

Canadian Labor Minister Lisa Raitt said it is unlikely freight service at Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (CP) will resume Thursday due to delay tactics by opposition politicians in the upper house on a bill to end the railroad’s eight-day strike.

The Conservative government used its majority in Canada’s lower house, along with a series of parliamentary tactics that limited debate, to get a back-to-work bill approved early Wednesday. Raitt introduced the bill Monday with the hope rail service would resume Thursday.

But she acknowledged a Thursday restart now appears unlikely as Liberal Party members in the senate aren’t willing to agree to an expedited debate.

“We cannot resume service on Thursday” as long as there is a delay in the senate, she told reporters following the weekly meeting of the Conservative Party caucus. “These [Liberal] senators have determined they are not going to help us with back-to-work legislation, so it is on their conscience.” Read more here.
 

(Lee-Anne Goodman – The Canadian Press)

Four U.S. senators are urging the Obama administration to swiftly greenlight a new customs and immigration facility at Montreal’s Central Station, a move that would vastly improve rail service between Quebec’s biggest metropolis, New York City, the state of Vermont and the Washington, D.C., region.

The senators have sent a letter to two of Obama’s highest-ranking cabinet secretaries stressing the importance of the hub.

“The economic links between Canada and the states of Vermont and New York are vital, and there is great potential to make them stronger still,” they wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano, the homeland security czar. “A smoother customs experience in Montreal will spur job creation and economic opportunities on both sides of the border.” Read more here.
 

(London Free Press – David Akin)

The federal government is tapping a high-powered panel of blue-chip Canadian business executives to tell it what to do next when it comes to free trade.

International Trade Minister Ed Fast said Tuesday the advisory panel will act as a sounding board as the government develops what it calls its “global commerce strategy.” The broad thrust of that strategy is to continue find new ways to wean the country’s economy off its reliance on American consumers.

“Our goal is to have a new, fully operational global commerce strategy in place sometime in 2013, one that will guide Canada’s trade priorities well into the future,” Fast said in a speech here Tuesday. Read more here.
 

(CFIA – Import Systems Unit)

This is a reminder that a full database backup of the production database (PROD)  is scheduled for Saturday, June 2nd, 2012.  CFIA systems will be unavailable from 3am to 7am EST.

Please note that full database backups of the production database (PROD) are scheduled for the first Saturday of every month between 3am to 7am EST.
 

(Journal of Commerce – Mike King)

Cargo carried on international routes by Association of Asia Pacific Airlines members fell 7.6% in April from prior year

Softening cargo rates due to weak demand continue to impact the bottom lines of Asia’s leading carriers, according to the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines.

Cargo carried on international routes by AAPA member airlines measured in freight tonne kilometres fell 7.6% last month compared to a year earlier and was down 4.8% over the first four months of the year. Read more here.
 

(Financial Times – Ralph Atkins)

Steep declines in the euro symbolize the woes of Europe’s monetary union but could have a silver lining: the boost to exporters may offer some much-needed support to economic growth across the 17-country region.

Last year, even as the euro crisis escalated, the currency’s value remained remarkably steady. In recent weeks, however, financial market sentiment towards the euro has turned decisively for the worse.

On a trade-weighted basis, the euro has fallen by more than 6% over the past year to the lowest since 2003. Against the dollar, the euro has dropped to a near two-year low of about $1.25. On a rough rule-of-thumb used by economists, a 10% fall in the euro’s trade-weighted value should boost economic growth by about 0.5 percentage points or more. Read more here.
 

(MarketWatch – Shane Romig)

Mining companies with operations in Argentina will be required to submit requests to the government 120 days before importing goods and set up an “import substitution” department to boost buying of locally made goods, the planning ministry said in a statement Monday. The mining companies will have to submit quarterly estimates of their purchasing needs, which will be vetted by a special working group at the Mining Ministry, according to the statement.

The new measures come amid a host of formal and informal barriers to imports thrown up by the government so far this year. The barriers are designed to safeguard the country’s international reserves by limiting imports of goods and services and to protect local manufacturers from competition from cheaper imports. Read more here.
 

(Daily Commercial News)

The Conservative government introduced back-to-work legislation for 4,800 striking Canadian Pacific Railway workers Monday, saying Canada’s entire economy was at risk along with the country’s international reputation. [...]

Canadian Pacific spokesman Ed Greenberg said once the legislation passes, “our company will shift our attention to fully preparing for a timely and disciplined ramp-up in operations with a view to achieve full production levels as soon as possible for the benefit of all our customers.” Read more here.
 

(Vanessa Lu – Toronto Star)

The Big Three automakers have been scrambling to move parts and components to keep assembly lines running, including shipping goods by air and marine.

That’s pricey, said Mark Nantais, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, but the automakers don’t want production lines to go idle, which would mean $1.5 million an hour in lost revenue.

While he won’t say what the CP Rail strike is costing the automakers, every day has an impact, he said, even on finished vehicles that need to be shipped via rail, sometimes to the United States. Read more here.
 

(Ian Munroe – CBC News)

Disruptions in supply lines are snowballing and will take time to clear

After tabling back-to-work legislation in the House of Commons, federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt says she wants to see Canadian Pacific Railway trains moving again by Thursday.

But transportation and commodity experts say it could take quite a while for CP’s rail service to get back to normal once the strike is brought to an end.

Barry Prentice, a business professor at the University of Manitoba, says that in the past only a handful of commodities were transported by train. But today “everything is moving in containers” that are often sent at least partway by rail.

As a result, the effect of the strike is “much more widespread than would have been the case in the past across the economy,” he said.Read more here.
 

(Scott Deveau – Financial Post)

Federal labour minster Lisa Raitt tabled a back-to-work bill in Parliament Monday to put an end to a strike at Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.

Ms. Raitt also put forth a motion to expedite the bill’s passage allowing for it to be dealt with in one sitting of the House and to limit the amount of time for its debate.

She said she hopes the bill would see CP’s freight service resume by Thursday. Read more here.
 

(Sarah Schmidt – Postmedia News)

Back-to-work legislation could be introduced in the House of Commons today

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. said Sunday the federal government will table back-to-work legislation after talks with striking rail workers collapsed.

Company spokesman Ed Greenberg said that Labour Minister Lisa Raitt released the negotiating parties Sunday afternoon and the government-appointed mediator gave up.

“The legislative process will now commence,” Greenberg said in a statement.

The strike of 4,800 railway workers began Wednesday and immediately halted freight deliveries of grain, coal, cars and other products.

Port Metro Vancouver, along with its terminal operators, Sunday called on Raitt “to immediately bring the stoppage to an end by introducing the necessary legislation.” Read more here.
 

(Tracy Sherlock – Postmedia News)

The stakes in the battle over cross-border shopping, already a multi-billion-dollar business, are about to be raised when duty-free limits go up June 1.

After years of watching Canadians line up to cross the border seeking cheaper prices, particularly with the dollar near parity, local retailers now face the prospect of even higher duty-free thresholds.

Canadian retailers are starting to fight back, pushing the federal government to investigate why businesses on this side of the border face higher wholesale prices that they’re forced to pass on to consumers to stay in business. Read more here.
 

(Bloomberg News)

China’s allegation that renewable- energy subsidies in five U.S. states violate free-trade rules ratchets up a potentially costly trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

“It’s a long, slow escalation of trade and currency wars as we race to the bottom,” said Theodore O’Neill, an analyst with Wunderlich Securities Inc. of New York.

Programs supporting renewable power, including wind and solar, in Washington state, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio and California, violate World Trade Organization policies and trade treaties, according to a preliminary finding of an investigation posted yesterday on the website of China’s Ministry of Commerce. China filed a complaint today at the WTO over U.S. procedures for calculating anti-subsidy duties on imports. Read more here.
 

An updated list of recently published government memorandums, notices, regulations and decisions for the week ending May 25, 2011 is now available on our website here.
 

(Journal of Commerce – Bill Mongelluzzo)

Containerized imports are starting to back up

Port Metro Vancouver remained fluid during the first two days of a strike that shut down Canadian Pacific Railway’s operations throughout Canada, but if the job action continues much longer both container and bulk shipments will be severely affected, a port executive said Thursday.

Vancouver, like other ports on the Pacific Coast of North America, is heavily dependent upon rail, said Peter Xotta, vice president of planning and operations at Canada’s largest port. Vancouver is served by CP, Canadian National Railway and BNSF Railway. The two Canadian rail carriers account for the vast majority of the port’s rail traffic, and they split the volume evenly. Read more here.
 

(China Daily – Li Jiabao)

China appealed to the World Trade Organization to challenge U.S. countervailing duties against Chinese exports in a package of 22 cases, including the recent solar panel case, said a statement on the website of China’s Ministry of Commerce on Friday.

“We abstracted the common wrongdoings in 22 countervailing cases that the U.S. launched against Chinese exports since 2006 and appealed to the dispute settlement body of the WTO for negotiations with the United States. Our aim is to fight against the misuse of trade protection measures and protect the rights of Chinese enterprises,” said Li Chenggang, head of the ministry’s department of treaty and law.

China’s appeal points out that its state-owned enterprises are not public institutions or bodies, China’s rightful support for industrial development was wrongly taken as subsidies, and the U.S. made unfavorable presumptions in case of insufficient evidence from Chinese enterprises, Li said. The export value of the package of the 22 countervailing cases including lightweight thermal paper, crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells and utility scale wind towers, totaled $7.286 billion, according to the ministry. Read more here.
 

(Reuters – Alex Threlfall)

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said on Wednesday that he expects to leave office at the end of President Barack Obama’s first term, and also expressed enthusiasm about the potential for a trade agreement between the United States and the EU to boost jobs and growth on both sides of the Atlantic.

“I’ve been privileged to serve, but it would be my intention to take advantage of the opportunity to go back and serve my family now,” Kirk told Reuters Insider during a break in the spring meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a developed country group.

Kirk, who has not previously publicly said he plans to leave if Obama is re-elected, noted there was a tradition of U.S. cabinet officials submitting their resignation at the end of a president’s first term. “Like most members of the cabinet I do not anticipate that I would be around,” Kirk said, but added it is ultimately “the president’s call” whether to accept his resignation or not. Read more here.