Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming recently stated that China will maintain its exports of rare earths in 2011, denying reports that China would significantly reduce its export quotas. China was in talks with consumer countries and countries with rare earth reserves to find a solution to the supplies of rare earths, Chen said in response to reports that China would reduce its export quotas by up to 30% in 2011.
The World Trade Organization announces that at a meeting of the “special session” of the WTO’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council, which is the forum for negotiating the geographical indications register for wines and spirits within the Doha Round. intellectual property negotiators provided information on how key aspects of geographical indications protection work in their countries. They focused on what information is taken into account when a term is proposed for protection, and how this would be affected by the proposed register.
The European Commission has announced that the ninth Union for the Mediterranean Trade Ministerial Conference will take place November 11, 2010. Ministers will discuss joint working priorities for 2011 including actions to complete the Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area, the establishment of a Euro-Mediterranean Trade and Investment Facilitation mechanism, and ways to enhance regional cooperation on fight against piracy and counterfeiting.
The European Commission has posted a proposal to amend its regime for the control of exports, transfer, brokering and transit of dual use items. The last update of Annex I of the Regulation occurred in May 2009 and since this time, all of the international export control regimes have taken decisions to modify and update their control lists. Consequently, there is a need to make modifications to ensure that the commitments made by EU Member States are fully applied across the entire EU and that EU exporters have legal certainty as to which items require export licenses.
Mexico's Diario Oficial of November 5, 2010 lists notices from the Secretary of the Economy as follows:
The Government of Canada issued the following releases on November 5, 2010:
In the November 5, 2010 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union, the following trade-related notices were posted:
Brazil's Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade has announced that Brazil's Foreign Trade Chamber has published resolutions lowering import duties on 167 products, principally in the automobile, chemical, and auto parts industries. (See resolutions for affected tariff numbers.)
The Government of Canada issued the following releases on November 4, 2010:
This is a reminder that the European Union deadlines to register certain chemical substances under the EU REACH1 regulation and to notify the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) of the classification and labeling of chemical substances placed on the EU market pursuant to the Classification, Labeling and Packaging (CLP) regulation are approaching.