Word: traded
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Colombia's cocaine industry. When Colombian authorities seized 600 kilos of cocaine hidden in everything from shoeboxes to a dog cage containing a live dog, drug traffickers retaliated by killing 40 people in one weekend. Nicknamed the "Medellin Massacre" after the city at the center of Colombia's drug trade, the murders ignited years of raids, kidnappings, and assassinations (a 1985 Medellin cartel "hit list" even included names of U.S. businessmen, embassy members and journalists...
...press has given the flare-up an ascending series of alarming descriptions: "a dispute that could lead to a trade war"; a "mini-trade war"; and the full, flaming "Obama's first trade war." This month's ban on Mexican truckers operating in U.S. territory quickly led to Mexico's imposing retaliatory tariffs on a wide range of American products. The speed with which the two governments have been willing to sacrifice free trade for a political spat has politicians and business lobbies south of the border increasingly worried about how well the fragile Mexican economy can survive the fracas...
...With the world economy being so unstable and the Mexican peso falling, it is crazy to get into this protectionist trade dispute now," says Representative Edmundo Ramirez of Mexico's former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. "Our governments should be sitting down and negotiating solutions, not slapping on retaliatory measures." (See pictures of the Great Wall of America rising on the Mexican border...
Ruiz Mateos made the angry statements as he announced that Mexico would slap tariffs across 90 U.S. products that were worth $2.4 billion in trade in 2007. He pulled no punches about his goal: the tariffs were designed to hit as many different U.S. states as possible. Going into effect on March 19, the tariffs of 10% to 45% affected goods ranging from onions and shaving cream to fruit juice and red wine. There was even a tariff on Christmas trees, which may not have worried the growers too much because they don't sell many in March...
...extent to which the government is now willing to go to preserve a "harmonious society," in President Hu Jintao's oft quoted catchphrase. Whereas previous leaders like Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin have taken risky steps such as opening the country to economic reform and joining the World Trade Organization, the administration of President Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao seems "paralyzed by fear of the downside," as Bequelin of Human Rights Watch puts it. He says the state's level of control has always oscillated, but with a long period of heavy repression having already past and no prospect...