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Mostrando postagens com marcador trade policies. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador trade policies. Mostrar todas as postagens

quarta-feira, 1 de agosto de 2018

Trumponomics: noticias depressivas na frente comercial - Foreign Policy

Trump’s $12 Billion Bailout Is No Remedy for Farmers Caught in Trade War

Additional subsidy angers some lawmakers, and could cause problems at the WTO.


Workers transferring soybeans at a port in Nantong, China on April 9. (AFP/Getty Images)
Workers transferring soybeans at a port in Nantong, China on April 9. (AFP/Getty Images) 

Trade and agriculture experts are warning that U.S. President Donald Trump’s planned $12 billion farm bailout amounts to a misguided attempt to cushion the damage of the administration’s increasing use of tariffs against trading partners and is unlikely to address the long-term risks farmers face of losing their lucrative export markets.
The subsidy, outlined last week, could trigger a challenge at the World Trade Organization, where the United States is already under fire for using questionable justifications to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum, the experts said.
It has also angered some lawmakers who want protections for industries in their own home states.
Trump administration officials are working to finalize the details of the aid program—which will benefit farmers caught in the crossfire of the trade war with China—by the U.S. midterm elections in November.
The idea is to use a combination of price supports for depressed crops, purchases of surplus commodities, and assistance in promoting exports.
“A bad tariff policy shouldn’t be used to justify other bad policies,” said Daren Bakst, an agricultural expert at the Heritage Foundation.
The unusually large aid program, which has been in the works since China first threatened to curb purchases of U.S. farm products in retaliation for U.S. tariffs, marks the administration’s latest use of decades-old legislation enacted by past presidents to advance its economic policy.
To justify tariffs on China, it relied on Kennedy- and Nixon-era legislation. The administration is using 70-year old Truman-era laws on energy and national security to prop up the coal sector. The farm bailout comes directly from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Great Depression-era aid programs.
The bailout, and work on additional tariffs on as much as $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, contrasts sharply with the Trump administration talk of a zero-tariff, zero-subsidy world.
Farmers and agricultural lobbies have cautiously welcomed the assistance. But most stressed that they’d prefer to have more access to overseas markets—like those that would have been opened up by the Trans-Pacific Partnership or a similar trade pact with the European Union, or the huge Chinese market partially closed in response to the Trump administration’s decision to levy tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods.
“Our emphasis continues to be on trade and restoring markets, and we will continue to push for a swift and sure end to the trade war and the tariffs impacting American agriculture,” said Zippy Duvall, the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, in a statement.
Read More

Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustration


State of the Trade Wars


Tracking U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs — and the retaliatory measures other countries are taking.

A cargo ship at a port in Qingdao, China on March 8. (AFP/Getty Images)


Trump’s Trade Wars Prompt Congressional Pushback


As the U.S. trade war with China escalates, a growing number of GOP lawmakers want final say on tariffs.

With the U.S. bailing out, the remaining 11 countries forged ahead and signed a revised Pacific trade pact in Santiago, Chile, Mar. 8, 2018. (Claudio Reyes/AFP/Getty Images)


The U.S. Wants Back in the TPP? Good Luck With That.


Asia is moving on without America when it comes to trade — and could be better off for it.
The main tool the administration is reaching for is a $30 billion-a-year fund created in 1933 to help farmers hit by the Great Depression. Known as the Commodity Credit Corporation, it gives the executive branch the ability to funnel public money to agriculture without consulting Congress. (After President Barack Obama used the fund to provide disaster assistance to rural areas, Congress put restrictions on using it, then reopened the fund for President Donald Trump.)
The assistance comes on top of about $15 billion a year that agriculture already gets from the government in the form of price supports, subsidized crop insurance, and the like. Those programs are meant to cushion farm incomes in case of poor harvests or falling commodity prices—such as the price collapse that hit U.S. soybean producers this year.
“The administration hasn’t made the case why existing programs aren’t sufficient for this alleged harm,” said Bakst. He noted that the assistance was designed at a time when farmers’ median household incomes were much lower than the national median; now, farm households are wealthier than most.
Members of Congress are questioning why farmers are apparently being singled out for assistance when other sectors are also feeling pain from the trade war. Two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, say fishermen in their states are also dependent on the Chinese market and deserve a bailout. House Democrats are preparing legislation that would do just that.
More broadly, many parts of the U.S. economy face exposure to higher costs and lower revenues thanks to the trade war. Companies that use steel and aluminum face higher costs.
Many manufacturing firms now have to pay more for Chinese goods they use to turn out finished products. The scope of that damage will only grow if the Trump administration pulls the trigger on additional tariffs on a further $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned. Bailing out all the bits of the economy hit by the fallout could cost almost $40 billion, dwarfing the estimated damage done to the farm belt.
And the farm aid doesn’t just carry political risks. Under World Trade Organization rules, countries have limits on how much aid they can offer agriculture. Broadly speaking, the United States can offer about $19 billion a year of subsidy-like supports without getting in trouble. On paper, the way the assistance is calculated, even the $12 billion bailout shouldn’t exceed the limit, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said last week.
In practice, though, calculating and categorizing different kinds of farm support into acceptable and unacceptable boxes is tricky.
“This is a lot of money, and it’s difficult to try to make it fit into these WTO boxes; there’s some potential to go over,” said Joe Glauber, a former chief economist at the USDA. Plus, other countries could file a challenge if they believe U.S. farm support distorts global markets in any way, a case that might be easier to make.
“One way or another, this will get a lot of attention in Geneva other the next six months,” he said.
The bigger question is what happens to this farm support in years to come if the trade war with China continues. The administration has repeatedly described the assistance as a one-time aid to cushion farmers who made planting decisions before China decided to retaliate, and insisted that it won’t be needed next year. Eighty-odd years of U.S. farm policy suggest otherwise.
“In agriculture, temporary payment programs have a habit of becoming permanent,” said Bakst, the Heritage analyst.
With China—the world’s largest market for soybeans—now looking to Brazil for the crop, American soybean farmers fear they may lose the lucrative Chinese export market forever. That matters for the next 10 years, because China’s appetite for agricultural products is only expected to grow. While U.S. farmers might be able to sell additional goods to Europe, nothing compares to the size and growth potential of the Chinese agricultural market: the one commodity sector in which the United States runs a goods trade surplus with Beijing.
“Even if relations with China normalize, Brazil will have sought to meet those needs, and that will add weight to their competitive position,” said Glauber, the former USDA economist. “That’s the real loss for U.S. farmers, and that’s what really scares me.”


Keith Johnson is Foreign Policy’s global geoeconomics correspondent. @KFJ_FP

More from Foreign Policy
By Taboola

segunda-feira, 9 de julho de 2018

Desempenho comercial do mercado único europeu - John Weeks (Social Europe)

Trade Performance In EU Internal Market In Euro Era

John Weeks
John Weeks
European integration began as a political project to institutionalize peace and cooperation, with the Coal and Steel Community the initial step. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, roughly coinciding with the end of the Cold War, priorities changed – from peace and cooperation to trade competitiveness.
The Treaty on European Union (TEU) formalized this shift (also known as the Treaty of Rome, subsequently amended by the Treaties of Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon). Article 2, section 3 reads:
The Union shall establish an internal market. It shall work for the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. [Eur-Lex, emphasis added]
The treaty makes political and ideological specifications for the European Union. It commits all member governments to a specific form of economic organization, a “market economy”. Other parts of the two major EU treaties make it clear that “market economy” is synonymous with “capitalism” (Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union is the other).
No constitution of a major country, even though it may have a capitalist economy, includes such an ideological commitment, with the possible exception of China’s (Smith and Weeks 2017). The treaty language further specifies that the EU economy be “highly competitive”. Because those words are used immediately following the mandate for “an internal market”, it is a reasonable inference that “highly competitive” means “trade competitive”.
Because the treaty section commits to “a highly competitive social market economy”, singular rather than plural, the referent must be the Union as a whole. Thus, Article 2(3) must refer to extra-EU trade: that the EU economy taken as a whole should be internationally competitive. This interpretation implies that the TEU makes a fundamental change from the concept of the early initiators of integration. Their focus was to facilitate intra-EU trade, through a customs union that would lay the basis for political integration.

Intra- and extra-EU trade patterns

By definition the purpose of a customs union is to give preference to trade among members. With that in mind we can assess if the intentions behind the wording in the TEU have affected the pattern of EU trade. At the beginning of this century the adoption of the euro represented a major institutional change affecting EU trade. One would expect the euro’s entry to reinforce intra-EU trade.
Internal EU regulations on product safety and related rules also impact on intra- and extra-EU trade. We should expect EU regulations to have a different impact on extra-EU imports than on extra-EU exports. Extra-EU imports must conform to intra-EU regulations, while extra-EU exports need not do so. The restrictive fiscal policies pressed upon national governments after 2010 represent a second possible depressor of intra-EU trade, due to their growth-reducing effects.
That extra-EU exports may face less regulation than extra-EU imports suggests the possibility of different patterns for exports and imports. The statistics indicate such a difference. Chart 1 shows annual rate of growth of intra- and extra-EU imports for the 19 Eurozone countries and the nine with national currencies from the introduction of the euro in 2001 through 2017. For the 19 Eurozone countries in a bare majority, 10 of 19, intra-EU import trade grew faster than extra-EU import trade. Among the non-euro countries in 7 of 9 intra-EU imports grew faster.
One would have expected the opposite result, faster growth of intra-imports for the euro group, not the non-euro group. A major purpose of the introduction of the euro was to reduce transactions costs, making trade more “seamless”. The statistics do not support that prediction. It appears that any cost-reducing role of the euro was outweighed by other effects.
One such effect might relate to level of development and structural characteristics. The ten countries in which intra-EU imports grew fastest were from the Baltic region or central Europe, countries in transition from centrally planned economies (annual rates in percentages): Lithuania (10.9), Slovakia (10.7), Romania (10.5), Bulgaria (9.2), Latvia (8.7), Estonia (8.6), Czech Republic (8.5), Poland (8.3), Hungary (6.7) and Slovenia (5.1). For all ten except Slovenia intra-imports grew faster than extra-imports. These statistics suggest that the euro has not facilitated intra-import trade.

Chart 1: Annual rates of growth of intra-EU imports and extra-EU imports, Eurozone and non-euro countries, 2001-2017 (percentages)

Note: Rate of growth calculated by using end years. Black line divides the 19 Eurozone members from the nine non-euro countries.
Source: Eurostat
The same statistics on exports is consistent with the hypothesis that EU rules have a relatively restrictive effect. Of the 28 countries, for only one, Bulgaria, did intra-EU exports grow faster than extra-EU exports, and for another the rates were the same to one decimal point (Sweden).
The statistics also cast doubt on the reputation of the German economy as an engine of export growth. Over the 17 years, German intra-EU exports grew slower than in 12 other EU countries (faster than 15); and for extra-EU exports 16 countries showed faster growth rates (eleven slower). The expanding German goods surplus resulted from relatively slow growth of imports compared to exports, rather than rapid export growth.

Chart 2: Annual rates of growth of intra-EU exports and extra-EU exports, Euro zone and non-euro countries, 2001-2017 (percentages)

Note: Rate of growth calculated by using end years. Black line divides the 19 Eurozone members from the nine non-euro countries.
Source: Eurostat

Peace, not trade

These statistics suggest a few conclusions. First, the EU internal market has integrated the formerly centrally planned countries into international commerce, though more so for imports than exports. Second, the EU internal market has not fostered trade growth relatively to the non-EU market. Its benefit to EU citizens is probably consumer protection rather than cheap goods, with the former the more important benefit. Third, the euro has not facilitated trade within the internal market, neither for imports nor for exports.
Many others have for several years argued that “benefits from trade” is a weak argument for EU membership. The statistics support that conclusion and indicate that it may apply to most EU members.   The strongest arguments for membership are those put forward by the visionaries of European integration in the late 1940s, which are political and social, not economic. EU reform should be based on the sublime goals of peace and cooperation, not the commercial banality of export competitiveness.

terça-feira, 16 de janeiro de 2018

Aluisio Lima-Campos, Juan Antonio Gaviria: Trade Policy: lancamento (em Washington)

Eu recomendo mesmo sem ter recebido o livro e sem ver o seu conteúdo.
Mas é que conheço o autor, da embaixada do Brasil em Washington, e sei de sua expertise nos temas de políticas comerciais, na teoria, na prática, casos concretos de contenciosos envolvendo o Brasil, os EUA e outros países.
Basta ver, aliás, os nomes que comentarão o livro quando do lançamento, todos experts reconhecidos nessa mesma área.

sexta-feira, 24 de novembro de 2017

Trade Policies: multilateral and regional scenarios - Yorizumi Watanabe, UnB, 1//12/2017

O melhor especialista japonês que conheço em políticas comerciais, estratégias nacionais e das multinacionais, cadeias de valor e integração regional na Ásia Pacífico.
Imperdível para todos os que trabalham com negociações comerciais em geral.
 
Yorizumi WATANABE
Following several appointments in Japan's foreign service, specializing in international
trade policy issues, Professor Watanabe has now brought those skills and experience to
the senior academic post he has filled at Keio University since 2005.
Prof. Watanabe’s distinguished career has featured significant engagement in all the
major bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations in which Japan has been involved in
the past two decades. This included the role of policy advisor to relevant Ministers, and
postings to Japan's diplomatic missions in Brussels and Geneva.
He was Deputy Director-General of the Economic Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of Japan from 2002-2004 and served as Chief Negotiator for the Japan-Mexico
Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and the Working Party on Russia’s
Accession to the WTO. He was Special Assistant to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of
Japan in 2004. He has been a member of the Task Force on Japan-India Economic
Partnership, Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry since 2006.
Prof. Watanabe completed his BA and MA and was PhD candidate in International
Relations at Sophia University, Tokyo. He also studied at the College of Europe in
Bruges under Belgian Government Scholarship. He is the author of a number of
publications on GATT/ WTO and trade and economic partnership agreements. His
most recent book on the TPP (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership
Agreement) has been ranked one of the top-ten best-selling books on economics in
December, 2011 in Tokyo.

Professor Yorizumi WATANABE
Institution: Keio University Yorizumi@sfc.keio.ac.jp
Languages: Japanese, English, French
Areas of expertise:
International political economy, World Trade Organisation, FTAs (Free Trade
Agreements) and Trade Rules/Negotiations
Biography:
Professor Watanabe (Osaka, 1953) is currently Professor of International Political
Economy at Keio University, Japan
[Experience]
- Special Assistant on GATT/UNCTAD Issues, Permanent Mission of Japan to the
International Organizations in Geneva (1985.3. -1988.3)
- Economic Affairs Officer, Tariff Division, GATT Secretariat, Geneva (1988.4-1990.4)
- Associate Professor of International Political Economy, Faculty of Economics, Nanzan
University, Nagoya, Japan (1990.4-1997.8)
- Special Assistant on Trade Policy Issues, Mission of Japan to the European Union,
Brussels (1995.7-1998.7)
- Professor of International Political Economy, Faculty of Comparative Culture, Otsuma
Women's University, Tokyo (1997.8-2005.3)
- Deputy Director-General, Economic Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tokyo,
Japan (2002.5- 2004.3)
- Chief Negotiator for the Japan-Mexico Economic Partnership Agreement (2002.5-
2004.3)
- Chief Negotiator, Working Party on Russia’s Accession to the WTO (2002.5- 2004.3)
- Chief Negotiator, Working Party on Trade and Competition Policy (2002.5- 2004.3)
- Senior Official for Trade and Investment (SOMTI), ASEM (2002.5- 2004.3)
- Special Assistant to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Tokyo, Japan (2004.4.-2004.11)
- Professor of International Political Economy, Faculty of Policy Management, Shonan
Fujisawa Campus (SFC), Keio University, Japan (2005.4 to date)
[Education]
- Department of Philosophy, Sophia University, Tokyo (Bachelor of Arts) (1972.4-1976.3)
- Department of Economics, College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium (Certificate of
Advanced European Studies) (1976.9-1978.6)
- Graduate School of International Relations, Sophia University, Tokyo (Master of Arts in
International Relations in 1981, Candidate for Ph.D. in 1982)
[Other Professional Activities]
- Member of a semi-governmental task force on Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement
(1999.1-2000.3)
- JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) expert to conduct WTO seminars in
Kazakhstan and Latvia (1999. 8-10)
- JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization) expert to conduct a WTO seminar in
Tehran, Iran (2000.8)
- Member of a research team on WTO New Round issues at the Institute of International
Policies (IIPS), (Sekai-heiwa kenkyuusho), Tokyo (2001.8-2003.3)
- Chairman of a task force on Japan-China Trade Relations and the WTO Rules, Institute
of Japan-China Economic Cooperation, Tokyo (2001.11-2002.3)
- Member of a committee on Capacity-Building Cooperation within the WTO System for
developing economies of the APEC, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA),
Tokyo (2000.10- 2002.3)
- Member of the Joint Study Group on the Japan-Chile Economic Partnership Agreement
(EPA) (2005.1-2005.10)
- Member of the Task Force on Japan-India Economic Partnership, Japan Chamber of
Commerce and Industry, Tokyo, Japan (2006.7- present)
- JICA expert to conduct a WTO seminar in Alger, Algeria (2007.3-4)
[Publications]
1) The GATT and the Uruguay Round (co-author with Prof. Tamotsu Takase), Toyo
Keizai, Dec. 1993, revised version Jan. 1999
2) Law and Politics of Contemporary Japan, (co-author with Prof. Masanobu Kato),
Sanseido, July 1994
3) “The United States and the European Community in the Uruguay Round”,
International Affairs, Japan Institute of International relations, May 1994
4) “Perspectives of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in East Asia and the WTO System”,
Journal of International Economic Laws, Japan Association of International Economic
Laws, October. 2001
5) WTO Handbook; Issues and Perspectives of the Doha Development Agenda, JETRO
PRESS, Tokyo, Japan, October 2003
6) FTA-EPA Negotiations, Nihon Keizai Hyoron Sha, May 2007
7) The GATT/WTO System and Japan, Hokujyu Publications, October 2007