Word: tariff
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...directed against the U.S., which has managed to conclude a recent trade agreement with China but has not formalized a single free-trade agreement in its own hemisphere since ratifying NAFTA in 1994. The stumbling blocks have included politically potent U.S. labor and agricultural lobbies that believe unrestrained tariff cutting will undermine the hard-fought gains in living standards won by their members. Try to get U.S. trade negotiators to discuss eliminating sugar subsidies or lowering steel tariffs, and "they won't address the question face to face," complains Antonio Simões, the head of Brazil's trade negotiating...
...distinct trade sectors last December: a forbidding, 1,200-page document in which virtually every word is surrounded by brackets that indicate a lack of full agreement on the substance. "About the only things that aren't bracketed are the chapter titles," says a negotiator. The draft includes proposed tariff reductions on at least 7,000 products, from orange juice to rolled steel. As a map of negotiations still to come, it promises to address such cutting-edge issues as electronic commerce, intellectual-property rights and telecommunications, along with provisions to ease cross-border red tape for businesses even...
...pull the nation back onto its feet. De la Rua also appointed Domingo Cavallo, a renowned free-marketeer, as his latest Finance Minister, with sweeping powers to dictate economic changes without legislative approval. One of Cavallo's proposed rescue measures would have slashed to zero the 14 percent Mercosur tariff that Argentina currently charges on capital goods from outside the trading bloc. Brazilian officials, at first sympathetic, erupted after reading the fine print, which included tariffs on imported cell phones, computer printers and high-technology items, all among Brazil's most lucrative exports to its neighbor. Argentina subsequently withdrew...
...Besides the reduction in the quotas - which E.U. trade commissioner Pascal Lamy couldn't resist characterizing as a "slightly smaller amount" - it's not clear what Bush's man on the scene, new U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick, obtained in exchange for lifting the tariff. But just as there was a bigger picture (Taiwan, trade) to U.S.-China relations than one errant spy plane, there's a bigger picture to Europe-U.S. relations than bananas. Like Bush pulling out of Kyoto. Or insisting on a missile-defense shield. Or reassessing U.S. European troop balance in the Balkans...
...Caribbean share of our imports has risen from 24% to 38%, while China's share has dropped from 11% to 6%." Brazil's footwear industry is overwhelmed in the U.S. by China, where costs are 10% lower, but foresees a boom if it can eliminate the current 8.5% U.S. tariff...