China soon will impose new export controls on a set of key critical minerals, including antimony, and technology used to process those minerals, the country’s commerce ministry said Aug. 15, according to an unofficial translation. Antimony can be used in the production of certain batteries, weapons and more. The minerals and technology “have a significant impact on national security,” China said, and exports will need a license before they can be shipped abroad. The controls take effect Sept. 15.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, during a Q&A with Reuters, said that China has acknowledged that its manufacturing overcapacity is a problem, but she said observers shouldn't expect a quick fix.
The International Trade Commission is preparing for new Chinese export controls on germanium and gallium to have a potentially “significant” impact on global supply chains, it said in a recently issued executive trade briefing (see 2307050018).
The U.S. and the EU held the fifth meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council in Washington on Jan. 30, where the two sides again committed to increasing trade and cooperating on economic security and emerging technology issues, according to a European Commission readout of the meeting. The commission said the EU and the U.S. agreed to “explore ways to facilitate trade in goods and technologies that are vital for the green transition” and strengthen approaches to investment screening, export controls, outbound investment and “dual-use innovation.”
China exports squid and tuna to the U.S. from its distant water fishing fleet, which "is characterized by numerous reported incidents of forced labor. The majority of the crew on board the vessels in this fleet are migrant workers from Indonesia and the Philippines, who are particularly vulnerable to forced labor," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a report to Congress sent last week. This was the first time that the report on illegal fishing, which comes out every two years, covered forced labor.
The U.S.-China trade talks “put Alibaba on the right side of all the issues on the table,” Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai said on a fiscal Q4 earnings call May 15. Calling the trade war the big “elephant in the room,” Tsai spoke as if a comprehensive trade accord was already in the bag. China’s “commitment to purchase more American products” means it will become a “net importing country,” reducing the U.S.-Chinese trade imbalance, he said. The Chinese e-commerce giant is "not concerned about slowing China exports affecting GDP growth because the Chinese economy is shifting from an export economy to a domestic consumption economy,” he said. "The middle class in China has reached critical mass of over 300 million, almost as large as the entire U.S. population," Tsai said. "The middle class will double in the next 10 years, especially from the lesser-developed Chinese cities. While total Chinese domestic consumption is $5.5 trillion today, consumption from these third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier cities, with a combined population of 500 million people, will triple from $2.3 trillion to nearly $7 trillion in the next 10 years." China in recent years also has made "significant improvements in reducing" intellectual property theft, as it "moves closer to global norms in protecting and paying for foreign IP," he said. Any trade accord with the U.S. will help further that goal, he said. “The vexing issues in the trade negotiations will resolve themselves, as the Chinese economy is already evolving to close the gap between the interests of the United States and China.”
The European Commission decided “in principle” Wednesday to launch an own-initiative (ex officio) anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation of imports of mobile telecom networks and essential elements such as radio access networks and mobile network cores from China, Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said. The decision won't be activated right now to “allow for negotiations towards an amicable solution with the Chinese authorities,” he said in a statement. China exports telecom network equipment to the EU market valued at just over 1 billion euros ($1.29 billion) per year, the EC said.
The Bureau of Census has issued a blog post stating that decreases in both exports and imports led to the Nation’s international trade deficit in goods and services decreasing to $43.5 billion in October 2011 from $44.2 billion (revised) in September. Exports decreased by $1.5 billion to $179.2 billion in October and imports decreased by $2.2 billion to $222.6 billion.
The Journal of Commerce reports that a federal appeals court denied a request for an emergency injunction to stop the Department of Transportation's U.S.-Mexico cross-border trucking pilot program, paving the way for the start of the program, which the DOT hopes to begin as early as September 6, 2007. The program did not begin on September 1 as some had said it would because the DOT's inspector general had not completed the assessment of the program, which a DOT spokesperson stated was expected to be delivered September 5, 2007. (JoC, dated 09/05/07, www.joc.com)
According to European Union (EU) sources, on June 27, 2005, the European Council (Council) adopted, with certain changes, a new Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). An EU press release explains that on June 23, 2005, a qualified majority of EU member states backed a compromise which amended certain aspects of the new EU GSP as it had been proposed. The adoption of this compromise ends a three month deadlock in the Council that had delayed the adoption of the new EU GSP.