Canada, EU win right to impose sanctions on U.S.

[Commie Girl]

Canada, EU win right to impose sanctions on U.S. over trade fines


TORONTO - The World Trade Organization gave Canada, the European Union and other countries the right to impose sanctions against the United States over illegally imposed trade fines.

Pascal Lemay, the European Union's trade commission, welcomed the WTO decision, but said the 25-member EU has not decided whether to bring in the sanctions.

The trade spat stems from the three-year-old Byrd Amendment – a U.S. antidumping law sponsored by West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd. The law allowed the U.S. government to give American companies the fines collected from foreign exporters deemed to be selling products in the U.S. market at artificially low prices. The U.S. steel industry was the biggest beneficiary of the law, getting hundreds of millions of dollars.

The WTO ruling gives Canada, the EU and other major U.S. trading partners, including Japan, Brazil, Chile, India and South Korea, the right to fine the U.S. up to 72 per cent of the money collected under the Byrd Amendment.

The WTO has given the U.S. until the end of 2004 to change the Byrd Amendment. The White House has called for the law to be changed, but the U.S. Congress has yet to act.

CBC (http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/national/2004/08/31/wto_040831.html)

[cormacobear]

European steel, Canadian Wheat, and softwood lumber have suffered dramatically from U.S. protectionism, while their Gov't shouts that it's all for free trade.

I just wish the world would place an embargo on all U.S. trade untill they pull their military, C.I.A., and money destined for dictators back within their own borders.

[Commie Girl]

CBC (http://winnipeg.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=mb_farmers20040831)
Aug 31 2004 02:54 PM CDT
Americans to continue battle against Wheat Board

WINNIPEG - American farmers say they are not giving up in their battle against the Canadian Wheat Board, despite a World Trade Organization ruling against their challenge of Canada's grain marketer.

The WTO's latest ruling exonerated the Canadian Wheat Board from charges of unfair trade practices.

Jim Peterson of the North Dakota Wheat Commission says the ruling is frustrating, but American farmers are taking it in stride.

"It's just one of many fights that we have going forward in our overall strategic plan," he says. "Going into this we knew that it would not be a simple, one-issue, one-legal-challenge type case."

Peterson says his group is lobbying to have the language changed in WTO agreements so it will not lose future challenges against the Canadian Wheat Board.

"Obviously we're frustrated that some of the issues which we think are quite clear – in where the wheat board or state trading enterprise is not competing under commercial considerations and is afforded certain government protections that other competing firms are not – that the current WTO language does not allow private producers protection against entities such as that," he says.

Americans believe private companies cannot compete with the Canadian Wheat Board because it has an export monopoly and receives government subsidies.

[cormacobear]

@#$%ers U.S. agriculture is even more heavily subsidized than ours. They use different systems to acheive the same ends. This has also been looked at by the W.T.O. we won that time too, the courts agreeing that the U.S. gov't was doing the same thing and semantics was insufficient to apply tarriffs to Can. wheat.

Besides we never said they couldn't socialize and run their distibution by co-op :D :P

[h&s]

If only it could actually be implemented....
However I may like the idea of it, I don't think we should support any decision the WTO makes. The WTO is an organisation that over-rules laws of democratically elected goevernments in the interests of 'free trade.' It is an organisation that considers environmental, social, and atmospheric protection laws as barriers to free trade. Supproting their decisions just encourages them.