The World Economic Forum has published a report entitled Enabling Trade: Valuing Growth Opportunities.

This report examines supply chain barriers to international trade and concludes that they are far more significant impediments to trade than tariffs.

Findings from this report include:

The following is from the 23 January 2013 edition of Embassy Magazine.

Provinces are staying home, says Quebec’s chief negotiator.

Canadian and European chief negotiators are in Brussels this week playing their best hands in hopes of striking a trade deal that one observer says could be signed “literally any time” in the next few months.

The provinces won’t be present at the meetings.

The following is from the 23 January 2013 edition of Embassy Magazine.

Canada should take the lead in trying to wrap up a trade deal this year with the Caribbean Community, called CARICOM.

Such a deal could become a model for Canada’s negotiations with other developing countries on its priority list, thus improving prospects for trade negotiations in other parts of the world. A deal with CARICOM also provides an opportunity to put recent statements by CIDA Minister Julian Fantino on trade and development into practice.

Lack of progress

The following is from the 23 January 2013 edition of Embassy Magazine.

Hee-yong Cho says Korea trade talks need ‘flexibility.’

South Korean Ambassador Hee-yong Cho says he wants no tariffs on imports of Korean cars to Canada, while urging his Korean colleagues and his Canadian counterparts to show a little “flexibility” in the seven-year-old trade talks.

“Basically less tariff will be better,” Mr. Cho told Embassy during an interview on Jan. 11. Canada has a 6.1 per cent tariff on Korean cars. 

The following is from the 22 January 2013 edition of Journal of Commerce.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexico’s Tax Administration Service have signed a joint work plan that lays out a plan for the mutual recognition of their authorized economic operator programs, the United States’ Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism and Mexico’s New Certified Companies Scheme.

The plan is expected to be implemented in two years. It was signed by David V. Aguilar, Customs’ deputy commissioner, and Aristoteles Nunez Sanchez, SAT’s director.

The following is excerpted from a January 2013 notice by the World Trade Organization.

As set out in the procedures for the appointment of Directors-General (WT/L/509), as early as possible after the close of the one-month nomination period, candidates shall be invited to meet with Members at a formal General Council meeting at which they will be invited to make a brief presentation, including their vision for the WTO, to be followed by a question-and-answer period.

This notice is available in its entirety at:

The following is excerpted from an 18 January 2013 news item by the World Trade Organization.

Chairperson John Adank told agriculture negotiators on 18 January 2013 that more focused discussions should start in mid-February as members started the new year looking at recently compiled data and promising to respond to questionnaires seeking more information.

This item is available in its entirety at:
http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news13_e/agng_18jan13_e.htm

The following is from an 18 January 2013 speech by DG Pascal Lamy of the World Trade Organization.

Director-General Pascal Lamy, in a speech at the National Research University — Higher School of Economics in Moscow on 18 January 2013, expressed the hope that the Russian Federation “will use the opportunity of WTO accession as part of a wider strategy to improve the competitiveness of the Russian economy and to successfully integrate into the global marketplace, in order to increase welfare for the Russian people”.

The following is from the 20 January 2013 edition of Journal of Commerce.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has begun investigating allegedly subsidized imports of shrimp from China, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, after determining that the Coalition of Gulf Shrimp Industries provided enough information to warrant investigations that may lead to the imposition of countervailing duties on nearly $4.3 billion of shrimp imports.

COGSI filed petitions seeking relief on Dec. 28, 2012.