- •Text bank
- •Slowing down? not these trends
- •Japan tops growth forecasts
- •U.S. And euope hint at economic cooling
- •Growth in china slows as controls take hold
- •Unit II
- •Eu trade gap with asia stirs currency debate
- •Digital dragon
- •Record china trade surplus
- •U.S. Trade gap narrows as oil costs decline
- •The International Herald Tribune, November 10-th, 2006
- •Yen falls against dollar on u.S. Trade data
- •Japan’s trade surplus drops sharply Latest data spur concern that economy may slump further
- •Europe scolds china on trade and currency
- •Unit III
- •U.S. Says chinese tax isn’t enough
- •Wider market access for former eu colonies
- •China raises stakes in eu shoes battle
- •U.S. Paper mill at heart of tariff threat against china
- •Beijing fires back at u.S. Complaints
- •Unit IV
- •Honda takes lead with exports from guangzhou
- •Vw plans to increase chinese car parts exports
- •How danone’s china venture turned sour
- •Domestic car sales veering into the slow lane
- •Toyota looks to expand in america
- •Expanding abroad – and growing at home
- •Tech: slow at home, growing abroad
- •Chrysler to share more parts with mercedes
- •Arcelor mittal looks at brazilian expansion
- •Gm growing in india, reshaping in europe
- •Ge takes a new line in the business of outsourcing
- •German companies look abroad for gains
- •Electrolux to shift plants abroad
- •Unit VI
- •Troubled carriers face some stiff competition
- •Ready for a cargo surge
- •China trade to enrich ports in u.S. East, too
- •Here winners are fast rather than large
- •A renaissance for railroads
- •Western retailers shift their supply chain tasks to china
- •Unit VII
- •Soaring prices boost recycling of computers
- •Asian nations shift policies to offset rising energy prices
- •Rising cost of gas raises fears of gouging
Unit III
№ 12
U.S. Says chinese tax isn’t enough
China’s imposition of tariffs on apparel exports two weeks ago does not address the concerns of the United States, which wants Beijing to remove barriers to U.S. fabric exports and end local and provincial subsidies for apparel factories, a senior American trade official said here on Monday.
The complex global system of quotas that has governed international trade in textiles and apparel for more than three decades expired on Dec.31.That has prompted fears in the United States that low-cost Chinese exports might flood American and European markets and bankrupt local companies.
The Bush administration and the U.S. apparel industry had been counting on the re-imposition of quotas on Chinese apparel exports under special “safeguard” provisions that China accepted as part of the price of its joining the WTO in 2001.
Beijing set export tariffs on apparel on Dec.27 as a fixed sum, typically 2 cents to 6 cents a garment, rather than a percentage of the price of the garment.
Most of the cost of clothing sold in stores in the United States lies in the design, transport, financing, insurance, store rent and so forth, while the shirts, pants and other garments by themselves often cost only $1 or $2 to produce.
The International Herald Tribune, January 11th, 2005
№ 13
Wider market access for former eu colonies
The European Union will scrap most of the remaining customs charges on imports from 78 former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP states) in an effort to energize the commodity-dependent economies. It put off, however, a decision on when to open the banana market, a contentious issue.
Imports from the group were worth €28.4bn in 2004, according to the European Commission. A quarter of exports from the ACP were petroleum product, and diamonds accounted for 11% of the total.
EU imports of commodities from 49 of the world’s poorest nations, excluding sugar, bananas and rice have been tariff-free and unlimited in volume since 2001. The Agreement excluded 37 ACP countries.
The commission has said that an exemption on rice approved Tuesday would expire in a “small number of years”, and sugar customs duties and ceilings would last until 2015, while the bloc overhauled its own market.
But ministers disagreed over bananas, with two producers France and Spain, pushing for offering phased-in access.
The EU relies on local grower for about 20% of its bananas, or about 800,000 tons a year. The EU has come under pressure to allow in more bananas from non-ACP countries, like Ecuador and Colombia.
International Herald Tribune, May 16th, 2007
№ 14
China raises stakes in eu shoes battle
China warned yesterday that it might seek arbitration at the World Trade Organization if the European Union went ahead with its threat to impose antidumping tariffs on imports of Chinese shoes.
EU punitive tariffs would not only affect 1,257 Chinese shoe exporters but would also hurt 478 European shoe companies, several European suppliers, European leather producers that have $600m of annual exports to China, and above all consumers.
China is already subject to about 50 EU anti-dumping measures, but Gao Hucheng, China’ vice minister of commerce, insisted that China’s fight against shoe tariffs did not reflect overall unhappiness with the EU’s growing use of anti-dumping investigations and was a “completely different” issue to last year’s dispute over booming Chinese textile exports.
Among the alleged flaws in the EU investigation, Chinese officials highlighted the fact that Brussels could not demonstrate that Chinese exports had specifically damaged European shoe production, which has steadily been losing ground. They noted that EU production had already fallen – before the lifting of quotas on Chinese shoe exports – from 1.1bn pairs in 1988 to 700 pairs in 2004.
Beijing is also claiming that the EU is using incomplete data and unsuccessfully trying to establish accurate trends over half a year of shoe exports, from January to July of last year, when Brussels launched its investigation.
The Financial Times, January13th, 2006
№ 15