Aurelia Butler

GENEVA (Reuters) – Britain will join the United States and Australia in backing a European Union trade case against China at the World Trade Organization over Beijing’s alleged trade curbs on Lithuania, a move the UK trade minister said would oppose “coercive trading practices”.The EU launched a challenge at the Geneva-based trade body last month, accusing China of discriminatory trade practices against Lithuania that it says threaten the integrity of the EU’s single market.”We will request to join the EU’s WTO consultation into these measures as a third party to ensure we combat economic coercion in trade together,” Anne-Marie Trevelyan said in a tweet.The United States, Australia and Taiwan have already signalled they intend to join the consultations.U.S. Trade Representative spokesman Adam Hodge said the Biden administration is “deeply concerned” by China’s discriminatory trade practices against Lithuanian goods and EU goods with Lithuanian content.”We will continue working with Lithuania, the EU, and like-minded allies and partners to push back on the PRC’s coercive economic and diplomatic behavior,” Hodge said in a Jan. 27 statement. “The United States will request to join these WTO consultations in solidarity with Lithuania and the European Union.”Vilnius is under pressure from China, which claims democratically-ruled Taiwan as its own territory, to reverse a decision last year to allow the island to open a de facto embassy in the capital under its own name. China has downgraded diplomatic ties with the Baltic nation and pressured multinationals to sever ties with it.The challenge at the WTO allows 60 days for the parties to confer in order to reach a settlement. If none is reached, the EU may choose to launch a formal dispute that would set up a WTO panel to study its claims against China.A Geneva-based trade official said the participation of other Western countries, assuming they are not blocked by Beijing, would be “helpful” to the EU’s case.”If you have other members arguing on your behalf and putting forward arguments, I think the panel would look at that,” he said. More

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Environmentalists and some European nations are set to clash with the United States over a possible comeback of supersonic travel, saying efforts to set noise guidelines by the middle of the decade could weaken efforts to fight climate change.Nearly two decades after the last flight of Anglo-French Concorde, a panel of United Nations aviation experts is meeting from Monday and will consider updating a decades-old supersonic noise standard by 2025, according to meeting papers seen by Reuters.The U.S.-backed push by aerospace companies is supported by U.S.-based Boom, which has vowed to launch a quieter and less polluting form of supersonic travel than the sleek but noisy Concorde, which ferried the rich and famous across the Atlantic.Even though it co-developed the only commercial jet to break the sound barrier in the 1960s, France has teamed up with Norway and Sweden to try to delay procedural work on future supersonic jetliners to focus on emissions rules for subsonic flight.All three countries have made climate action a political priority and want U.N. experts to focus on the source of the current industry emissions, people close to the International Civil Aviation Organization discussions said.Montreal-based ICAO sets standards on everything from runway markings to crash investigations, which its 193 member states typically translate into regulatory requirements.Planemakers need those standards “well in advance” to ensure they meet official expectations, said Dan Carnelly, vice-president at the International Coordinating Council of Aerospace Industries Associations, an international aerospace lobby.”No manufacturer can take the risk that they invest billions of dollars to design and test a new product only for it to become obsolete due to a new regulation imposed soon after it enters into service,” he said.The very technical discussion is key for a niche market promising to create thousands of jobs. Boom plans a North Carolina plant and has orders from United Airlines. But critics say focusing on supersonics now would divert time and expertise that could be put toward reducing broader emissions from aviation, a priority this year for ICAO’s full membership, including the United States.”Supersonic aircraft are a huge distraction for ICAO,” said Dan Rutherford, aviation director at the International Council on Clean Transportation, a U.S.-based environmental research group. Aerospace companies warn that ignoring supersonics at this early stage could be a recipe for countries to go it alone.”A patchwork of local, different regulations would be very difficult, if not impossible, to manage,” Carnelly said.ICAO declined comment while discussions at its Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection run from Feb. 7 to 18. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declined comment.Supersonics have struggled to meet the noise and emissions standards set for conventional planes.Boom says its ‘Overture’ jet would meet noise levels that already apply to subsonic planes and run fully on sustainable aviation fuel when it starts flying passengers in 2029. Carnelly said guidelines specifying that noise limits should be the same for supersonics and subsonics are needed for technical reasons. “The best thing for the industry is to have clear, timely and global standards,” a Boom spokesperson said. The company aims to start certification flight tests in 2026 ahead of commercial flights before the end of the decade.Some analysts remain cautious over its schedule, which originally called for the plane to enter service in 2023. More

The US has reached an agreement to ease Trump-era tariffs on Japanese steel as president Joe Biden presses to relax trade tensions with American allies. The US will suspend its 25 per cent levy on steel imports of up to 1.25mn tonnes a year beginning April 1, according to its agreement with Japan announced on Monday. A 10 per cent tariff on aluminium will remain in place. The administration of Donald Trump first imposed tariffs on a range of countries in 2018 on the grounds that cheap foreign metal imports posed a threat to national security.In a statement, the US and Japan agreed to co-operate on tackling overcapacity in the global steel market as a result of subsidies in non-market economies, as well as on the carbon intensity of the steel and aluminium sectors. Biden administration officials have previously accused China of dumping steel produced by its state-subsidised industry into global markets.Katherine Tai, the US trade representative, said the agreement would help Washington and Tokyo “work together . . . to combat China’s anti-competitive, non-market trade actions in the steel sector, while helping us reach President Biden’s ambitious climate agenda”.Japan will begin to put in place its own antidumping tariffs within six months, the statement said, and would confer with Washington on “potential domestic measures to address non-market excess capacity”.According to figures compiled by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, US steel and aluminium prices have been higher than European prices since the former president applied his tariffs to imported steel and aluminium.The tariffs were controversially based on national security grounds taken from section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act of 1962 — a justification that irritated Washington’s allies. The deal with Japan is similar to one struck by the Biden administration with the EU in October, which lifted tariffs on billions of dollars of transatlantic metal trade. As part of that agreement, Washington and Brussels pledged to co-operate on addressing Chinese steel overcapacity and to reach an agreement aimed at carbon emissions in the sector by 2024.

The US agreement with Japan does not set out a timeline for any further commitment to reduce carbon produced by steelmaking, but White House officials said the two would begin to “discuss methodologies and share data” related to emissions. Earlier this year, the US said it would begin talks over lifting tariffs on the UK’s steel and aluminium exports. The Financial Times reported last year that the US was delaying talks because of Washington’s concerns about London’s threats to change post-Brexit trading rules in Northern Ireland.Washington believed repeated threats by former Brexit minister Lord David Frost to suspend the Northern Ireland protocol, which ensures there is no trade border on the island of Ireland, compromised the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which brought peace to the region.Frost resigned just before Christmas and Liz Truss, the UK foreign secretary now in charge of talks, has taken a more conciliatory tone. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday is expected to debate legislation funding federal government programs through March 11, and avoid a politically embarrassing partial government shutdown when existing funds expire on Feb. 18.The move would give Democratic and Republican negotiators more time to work out funding for the remainder of the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30, House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro said in a statement on Monday.If approved by Congress, this would be the third such temporary funding measure since the fiscal year that began last Oct. 1.House passage would send the bill to the Senate, which would attempt to approve it and send along to Democratic President Joe Biden for signing into law before the midnight Feb. 18 deadline. The effort will take bipartisan cooperation in the Senate, where at least 60 votes are needed to advance most legislation and Democrats control only 50 seats in the 100-member chamber. Democrats and Republicans have been at odds for months over spending priorities in a massive appropriations bill with a price tag that is expected to be around $1.5 trillion.Congress is scrambling to carry out one of its most basic duties: funding regular government operations ranging from military programs to securing airports, enforcing environmental laws and helping state and local governments with law enforcement, housing and education programs.But with their control of the White House and Congress, albeit by the narrowest of margins, Democrats will be fighting to advance many initiatives that are important to their supporters in this so-called “omnibus” spending bill, especially with focus now turning to the Nov. 8 congressional elections.These include $200 million for programs to get to the root of gun violence, which is responsible for more than 110 deaths daily in the United States, according to Rukmani Bhatia, senior federal affairs manager at the Giffords anti-gun violence organization.Republicans are objecting to Democrats’ large increase in funding to battle climate change and have been blocking separate attempts to help “Dreamers”: immigrants brought into the United States as children illegally by parents or others.The spending bill would allow these people, many of whom have grown up in the United States, to be hired for federal jobs.Meanwhile, negotiators have been focusing on setting a top-line spending number, as Republicans insist that military spending be on par with domestic programs and Democrats push for more money for education and environmental programs. More

“We provide a very, very large part of the financial support for Ukraine,” said Scholz, noting that Germany had provided about $2 billion to the country.”We are prepared to continue to make this contribution.” More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Banks in Latin America and emerging Europe are most exposed to dollarization among developing economies, making them vulnerable to weaker local currencies and increasing withdrawals in the face of tighter U.S. monetary policy, Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) said on Monday.Interest rate hikes from the U.S. Federal Reserve are likely to slow capital flows to emerging markets, weakening countries’ currencies and economic growth, and potentially triggering credit risk at highly dollarized banks, Moody’s said. “Banks with large volumes of foreign-currency loans and deposits on their balance sheets are vulnerable to a spike in credit losses and pressure on their profitability and liquidity when the local currency drops sharply in value,” Moody’s analysts wrote.”It becomes harder for unhedged borrowers to repay foreign-currency loans, and depositors are prone to withdraw funds. High dollarization also threatens financial stability in times of crisis if central banks have insufficient reserves of foreign currency to bail out banks with dollar shortfalls.”Moody’s found that dollar deposits are highest across banks in Latin America, emerging Europe and the former Soviet countries, though relatively low in Asia Pacific and moderate in Africa. Higher exposure in Gulf states is offset by strong foreign currency reserves.Uruguay’s steady depreciation of the local peso and high inflation have lifted the country to the top of Moody’s list of dollarized countries at 74% of deposits – a trend that is there to stay. Savings from non-residents, mostly neighboring Argentina where inflation is expected to hit by year-end, will remain high at 10%.Turkey, another developing economy that park deposits in hard-currencies has seen locals grapple with high inflation and a weakening currency, will see dollar deposits rise to 65% by end-2022, up from 47% in 2020 and 63% last year.”Retail depositors continue to convert a material portion of their local-currency deposits into foreign currency (mainly U.S. dollars) to protect their savings from depreciation and inflation,” Moody’s said.Foreign-currency deposits fell sharply in Argentina, from 40% in 2019 to 16% in 2021 due to an erosion in confidence after the 2019 elections.”There is a chance of further outflows of dollar deposits if confidence in public policies or the central bank deteriorates further,” Moody’s said, noting the central bank had little to no foreign-currency reserves to support banks in a crisis. Trends of lower dollarization will continue in the short-term in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Peru and Ukraine. But banks in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus also have the highest exposure to unhedged borrowers, having no income in the foreign currency of the loan. More