Archive

BY MONICA DOBIE
ONTARIO tobacco growers have recently rejected the idea of selling their individual crops directly to buyers by an overwhelming margin of 98.5 per cent in a plebiscite organized by the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers’ Marketing Board. The organisation who say it is “in response to extensive efforts by Imperial Tobacco to convince producers to support its self-serving proposal for direct contracting.”…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is to update its administrative systems for monitoring its trade in textiles and clothing with the limited number of countries with whom it does not have trade agreements covering the sector, which include Taiwan.

In particular, the European Commission has asked EU ministers to update rules on surveillance and the use of electronic documentation.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE REVIEW of the implementation of the second phase of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing has become mired in disagreement, with developing country exporters and developed importers unable to agree a scheduled report, which would settle the issue.…

KEITH NUTHALL
ANGER has been sparked inside the Indian government by the European Union’s decision to effectively maintain anti-dumping duties on exports of Indian bed linen, which New Delhi claims is in clear contravention of two World Trade Organisation rulings on the matter.…

BY MARK ROWE
A CHINESE garment factory has threatened male employees with dismissal if they take a mistress; the practice has become rampant in recent years on the Chinese mainland, usually involving Hong Kong men, and one employer has had enough.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE UNITED States faces another World Trade Organisation battle over tariffs, this time with Thailand over Washington’s intention to waive clothing duties on exports from South American countries. The Thai government has warned that its industries will suffer heavily if the US waives duties on garments and footwear exported from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHINA has admitted that it has encountered “unexpected difficulties” in setting up low duty import tariffs for wool and cotton. The EU, Argentina, Malaysia and Brazil have said at the WTO’s agriculture committee that while they “understood China’s problems,” they “were also disappointed,” that the January 1 deadline for establishing the quotas was missed.…

Keith Nuthall
THE CANADIAN government has sought to dispel fears that it has unfairly retained trade restrictions on textile and clothing imports from China and Taiwan following last year’s decision to allow them to join the World Trade Organisation. In two letters to the WTO’s Textile Monitoring Bureau, Ottawa has claimed that remaining “quantitative restraints” comply with the two new members’ accession deals and the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing.…

Keith Nuthall
THE UNITED States government has claimed that Egypt is breaking its World Trade Organisation treaty commitments to bind textile and clothing tariffs, in its new system of specific duties on imports of these products.

Washington has complained to the WTO’s market access committee, claiming that Cairo’s action breaks article two of the GATT agreement on goods tariffs.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
DAVID Whitehead, the South African textile company, has announced that it will not axe any jobs in its factories provided output was increased. The company is currently negotiating with the South African Clothing and Textile Worker’s Union (SACTWU) over wages and conditions of employment in a bid to prevent redundancies.…