INTERNATIONAL AUTOMATED BROKERS
MID
DECEMBER ISSUE
In this Issue
· IAB
news
· 24hour
rule Question and answer link
· DOT
Partially Lifts Moratorium on Mexican Trucks
· Hopefully
The last Story about the ILWU & PMA for 6 Years
· Amid
Much Optimism, US Turns to Monitoring China's WTO Compliance
·
US,
Vietnam Exchange letters Normalize Trade Relations
IAB
and the Otay Port will be closed on December 25th and January 1st.
John Morris has been working on the website to improve it
and make it more of a resource for our Clients. The latest addition is the
listing of all contact information for all departments including the warehouse
and Lax Freight. Our website is www.iab-sd.com
We at IAB would like to wish every one a safe and joyous
holiday season.
USA-ITA Reports the Bush
Administration Is Planning to Propose Lowering Textile and Apparel Tariffs
The U.S. Association of
Importers of Textiles and Apparel (USA-ITA) has issued a Textile Development
Memo (TDM) stating that the Bush Administration is reportedly prepared to
unveil a market access plan, as part of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s)
Doha Development Agenda, that would include significantly reducing U.S. duty
rates for textiles and apparel products.
At USA-ITA’s Annual Trade and
Transportation Conference, held on November 20, 2002, Special Textile
Negotiator David Spooner stated that he believed USA-ITA members would be
“pleasantly surprised” by the U.S. proposal. According to USA-ITA, additional
goods, would go down to 8% five years after the tariff reductions are reports
on the plan indicate that the U.S. is prepared to endorse a formula under which
even the highest U.S. tariffs, namely those on textile and apparel begun. That
rate, according to USA-ITA, would be further cut until reaching zero in
subsequent years.
USA-ITA states that it has advocated that apparel products
be made part of the “zero-for-zero” tariff initiative in the WTO market access
negotiations. Additionally, USA-ITA reports an American Textile Manufacturers
Institute (ATMI) representative testified before the Trade Policy Staff
Committee (TPSC) earlier this year that ATMI would not object to a lowering of
tariffs on apparel
U.S. CUSTOMS ANNOUNCES ADVANCE MANIFEST
RULES
Customs posted questions and answers in pdf format
regarding the 24-hour advance vessel manifest rule. This is 19 pages of
information that is geared for freight forwarders and NVOCC, this gives a good
insight to how this rules applies in different situations
http://www.customs.treas.gov/impoexpo/24hour_rule.pdf
DOT Partially Lifts Moratorium on
Mexican Trucks
On November 27 Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta
directed the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
(FMCSA) to act on the applications received thus far from Mexico-domiciled
truck companies seeking to transport cargo from Mexico into the interior US.
Mineta’s action was prompted by a memorandum from President Bush that same day
which modified the moratorium on granting authority for such operations to
Mexican motor carriers.
As a result, Mexican trucking firms that receive operating authority from the
FMCSA will be permitted to deliver and back-haul cargo to and from the interior
US. However, Mexican trucks will still not be allowed to provide service
between points within the US.
The DOT states that since Congress imposed the moratorium in 1982, most Mexican
trucks crossing the border into the US have been restricted to operating in “commercial
zones,” which extend between three and twenty miles past the corporate limits
of cities along the US-Mexico border. The DOT notes that even with the
implementation of the truck provisions of NAFTA, most trucks from Mexico will
still only be certified for operating in commercial zones.
A December 2 International Trade Daily article noted that although Mexico
welcomed the US move, which comes years after the original NAFTA deadline, it
criticized as “discriminatory” the safety rules with which Mexican trucks will
have to comply to receive authorization to operate within the US. According to
the article, Mexican government officials have said that Mexico may seek
compensation or a suspension of some trade benefits to the US under NAFTA as a
result.
Latest
Turkish update
The Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements
(CITA) has issued a notice announcing that effective January 1, 2003, an export
visa will not be required for products in merged Cat 352/652, produced or manufactured
in Turkey and exported from Turkey on or after January 1, 2003. CITA explains
that the visa requirement is being removed because the quota on this category
expires on December 31, 2002, and the existing visa arrangement between the
Governments of the U.S. and Turkey only requires export visas for quota
categories. Note: Cat 352 is cotton underwear & cat 652 is man made fiber
underwear
Free Trade with Chile
On December 11, 2002, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
(USTR) announced that the U.S. and Chile reached agreement on a Free Trade
Agreement (FTA) which the USTR states will be the first comprehensive trade
agreement between the U.S. and a South American country.
Hopefully
The last Story about the ILWU & PMA for 6 Years
U.S. West
Coast longshoremen and port employers Sunday outlined a six-year contract deal
that brings a long-awaited modernization of the waterfront and ends a bitter
labor dispute on the docks that handle $300 billion in cargo each
year. The pact between the 10,500-member union and the Pacific Maritime
Association, which represents port employers, will also lead to new
labor-saving technology that shippers say is needed to make the ports more
efficient.
Longshoremen will probably vote on the agreement in early
January. Until then, the longshoremen will work under the terms of the old
contract. Federal Mediator Peter Hurtgen, who had been pressing to get a deal
done by Thanksgiving, said the six-year contract was double the length of most
collective bargaining agreements and would be good news for a slack U.S.
economy.
One of the key
sticking points to reaching the agreement was a deal on new technology -- such as
computerized cargo handling machinery -- that employers say is needed to make
the ports stretching from San Diego to Seattle more efficient.
Federal Mediator Hurtgen said the deal allows the shippers
to go ahead with new technology, which will lead to an estimated 400-500 job
losses, but gives the union control over remaining positions or any new ones
created from technology. The deal also brings to an end a bitter dispute
that led to the 10-day shutdown and accusations that union members were using
deliberate work slow-downs -- a charge dockworkers denied -- to gain leverage
in the negotiations.
Joe Miniace,
president of the Pacific Maritime Association, said the agreement was difficult
to achieve but the length of the contract would allow both sides to forge
better working relationships after the acrimonious talks.
Amid Much
Optimism, US Turns to Monitoring China's WTO Compliance
On 11 December 2001 China became the 143rd member of the World
Trade Organization (WTO), bringing to an end Beijing's fifteen-year quest to
join the WTO and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT). The Chinese government now will have to ease its control over the
economy, and foreign firms hope that the opening of the world's largest market
will result in windfall profits.
US Commerce Secretary Donald Evans congratulated Beijing
and stressed that China's WTO accession "will open China's market to
American exports of industrial goods, services and agriculture to an
unprecedented degree and strengthen the world economy". Evans added,
"For the first time, American firms have unprecedented freedom to trade in
China by buying and selling their own products there". As a consequence of
the country's WTO accession, Chinese tariffs on most industrial products will
be reduced from the 1997 average of 25% to 8% by January 2004.
However, broad-based optimism among US policymakers is
tempered by concerns about China's ability to live up to its WTO obligations.
US policymakers are worried about just how ill prepared Beijing might be. China
has not finished drafting the laws and regulations to implement its WTO
commitments. And if these issues present problems at the central government
level, they will present even bigger challenges with provincial and local
officials, who will, in fact, be tasked with the actual implementation on the
micro-economic level.
There are macro-economic concerns as well. With Chinese
economic growth showing signs of decelerating, the impact of the market opening
and structural reforms is even more uncertain now than it was when both the
global and the Chinese economies were expanding rapidly throughout the 1990s.
There are concerns that the necessary economic reforms combined with the
pernicious effects of foreign competition could result in bankruptcies among
China's inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and large-scale unemployment
and thus prompt China to pull back from its WTO commitments.
Consequently, the US focus has already shifted to ensuring
Chinese compliance with world trade rules. To monitor China's WTO compliance,
the Bush administration has set up an inter-agency group as a subcommittee of
the Trade Policy Staff Committee (TPSC) chaired by the Office of the US Trade
Representative (USTR).
The TPSC is the first part of a hierarchical three-tier
structure. The actual monitoring and processing of incoming information takes
place at the TPSC level, while significant questions of policy will be taken up
at the deputy-level Trade Policy Review Group (TPRG). The final decision-making
tier in this system is the cabinet-level National Economic Council (NEC),
headed by Lawrence Lindsey, President George W. Bush's chief economic adviser.
As many as twenty different US government agencies will be
represented on the TPSC subcommittee tasked with assessing China's WTO
compliance, but USTR, the Treasury Department, the Department of Commerce (DOC)
and the State Department are likely to take the leading roles. The principal focus
will be to assess the provincial and local implementation of China's WTO
commitments, as US policymakers are concerned that the directives from the
central government could go largely unheeded in the provinces, particularly in
such sensitive areas as the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR).
In its efforts to monitor China's WTO compliance, the TPSC
will act as a clearinghouse for information collected by US businesses
operating in China as well as US government agencies that are monitoring and
analyzing events as they unfold in the Chinese economy and in the regulatory
agencies. The reasoning behind this approach is dictated by the sheer magnitude
of the task, budgetary constraints and practicality. After all, individual US
businesses will have the most extensive insights into how well the Chinese
government performs in this regard. To this end, the Bush administration is
already working closely with the American Chamber of Commerce-Beijing, the
US-China Business Council and the US Chamber of Commerce.
Furthermore, the trade policy agencies of the US government
will draw on information collected by all US government agencies, and four DOC
compliance officers will be posted to the US embassy in Beijing. The WTO, with
its notification and reporting requirements, will also serve as an invaluable
source of information for US compliance-monitoring efforts. The Bush
administration intends to scrutinize closely the WTO's special annual reviews
of China's trade practices and policies, which will be conducted for the first
eight years after accession, with a final review in the tenth year, or at an
earlier date decided by the WTO General Council.
How the US will deal with significant non-compliance issues
remains to be seen. There are some concerns by the US foreign policy
establishment as to how China will react when confronted with compliance
omission. At first, the US likely will choose low-key, working-level
consultations to address compliance issues. In other words, the US will
exercise a great deal of diplomatic tact, to ensure that bilateral relations
develop in mutually beneficial ways, particularly because the Sino-American
relationship clearly transcends the realm of economics.
For the time being at least, US decision-makers appear to
be happy to hope for the best. This attitude is based partly on America's
typically optimistic impulses and on the firm belief that China's full
integration into the world economy may not only transform the country's
economic structures, but also the way in which the Chinese leadership views the
outside world. Source
http://www.tdctrade.com/
US, Vietnam
Exchange letters Normalize Trade Relations
On 10 December US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and Vietnam's
Trade Minister Vu Khoan exchanged letters formalizing normal trade relations
(NTR) and thus implementing the US-Vietnam bilateral trade agreement (BTA),
which was signed in July 2000. This event represents an important step in the
bilateral normalizations process, which commenced with the reestablishment of
diplomatic relations in 1995. For Vietnam, this seminal event also represents
an important steppingstone for eventual membership in the World Trade
Organization (WTO).
Zoellick commented, "We hope the agreement will help
speed Vietnam's integration into the economy of the Asia-Pacific and the world.
It provides a solid basis for Vietnam to work towards joining the 143 members
of the WTO. We look forward to contributing to that effort".
Zoellick was joined by Congressman Philip Crane
(Republican-Illinois), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Trade
Subcommittee and Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn (Republican-Washington). The
Vietnamese delegation was led by Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and
included four ministerial-level representative and eight vice ministers.
Both the US and Vietnam have high expectations for the
future development of bilateral trade relations. Despite the current US
recession, Vietnam hopes that the BTA will restore some of the economic
momentum the country lost as the result of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The
immediate effects for Vietnamese exporters will be that US tariffs, currently
averaging 40%, will drop to an average of around 4%. Currently, Vietnam's biggest
export product to the US is coffee, but exports of footwear as well as of
textiles and apparel are expected to climb quickly. A separate bilateral
textile agreement still has to be concluded, but the Bush administration
appears poised to begin such negotiations soon.
Source
http://www.tdctrade.com
*****************
Brian Raynoha
Director of Marketing
Customer Service Agent
International Automated Brokers, Inc.
619.661.6464 X 105