Search Results for: Korea

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has negotiated another restrictive annual textile and clothing trade deal with Belarus, imposing tight quotas on a wide range of products that the proto-Soviet state can export to the European Union. These cover many clothing lines, including shirts, T shirts, and trousers for 2006, but the mere fact that the EU is imposing quotas puts Belarus in a small unlucky gang of non-World Trade Organisation (WTO) members who have restrictive access to the EU textiles market, also including North Korea and (oddly) Montenegro.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AUTO manufacturing firms will be closely monitoring next week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong for signs that the WTO’s long-running Doha Development Round talks are about to crack open national automobile markets. Key auto industry countries – the US, the European Union, Canada, Japan, South Korea, India and Brazil – have been making steady progress this year in identifying non-tariff barriers to trade they would like to remove, such as burdensome customs procedures, technical engineering rules and licences.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BELARUS will – with North Korea – remain the only country in the world whose textile exports to the European Union (EU) are restricted by quotas, under a temporary 2005 agreement awaiting a rubber-stamp from EU ministers. It leaves Belarus apart from the quota-free trade introduced worldwide on January 1, as Belarus is not a World Trade Organisation member.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DESPITE its best harvest in 10 years, North Korea will suffer further food shortages in 2005 and require assistance to support over a quarter of its 23.7 million people, claim the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FORMAL decision has been taken by the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers to abolish all remaining textile and clothing import quotas for World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries from January 1. It means 210 quotas affecting exporters from Argentina, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand will go.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has been authorised by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to impose retaliatory duties on US knitted products for failing to scrap its Byrd Amendment law allowing payments of anti-dumping and countervailing duties to American companies making complaints sparking such tariffs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE JAPANESE government has warned that anticipated increased airspace capacity on the route between its Fukuoka air traffic control zone and that of Shanghai, in China, may not be available next year. Reduced vertical separation minimum (RVSM) services are being introduced on flight path A593 between Japan and China, but not on the SADLI section adjoining Chinese and North Korean airspace.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has identified eight priority countries as sources of counterfeit goods as the focus of special diplomatic efforts to pressure their governments to deal with the problem. China, Thailand, the Ukraine, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, South Korea and Indonesia will receive encouragement and advice on fighting counterfeiting.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has been authorised by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to impose retaliatory duties on US textile products for failing to scrap its Byrd Amendment law allowing payments of anti-dumping and countervailing duties to American companies making complaints sparking such tariffs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WANT to sell cigarettes? Go east, young man. That might be the advice that tobacco companies could glean from the latest set of World Health Organisation (WHO) smoking figures. Using 2003 or latest available data, the WHO has collated percentage rate proportions of smoking adults (18 and over), compared with total populations of all but 56 countries: the overwhelming majority of nations.…