US President George W. Bush's European tour kicks off this week under the cloud of transatlantic trade rows on steel, a subsidy-laden farm bill and allegations of protectionism against Washington.
The US portrays itself as the bastion of free trade, but partners have recently slammed it for backsliding after introducing new steel duties in March and approving a farm bill that includes billions in domestic subsidies.
Top industrialized states in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development were so worried about trade friction that their annual ministerial meeting explicitly urged nations last week to reject protectionism.
German Finance Minister Hans Eichel renewed the attack just days before Bush was due to fly into Germany, telling a conference he was worried the US had "fallen back into extremely protectionist behavior."
Germany and other allies are likely to press Bush over his commitment to free trade at a time when the US and the EU are trying to drive global talks that will lead to further liberalization of world commerce.
The negotiations, launched in Doha in Qatar last year, also aim to allow developing nations to benefit from global trade.
Despite the rows, trade experts say that so far a full-scale trade war is not on the horizon.
"There are threats here and there but the parties are still talking," said Raed Safadi, principal economist at the trade policy division of the OECD.
"It has not escalated and I hope it will not escalate so long as they keep talking," he said.
"The spirit of Doha is still alive," European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said, pointedly expressing hopes that US free trade rhetoric would be translated into reality. The steel row is one of the bitterest to break out between the US and its trading partners in recent years.
The EU has threatened to slap sanctions worth about US$300 million on a range of US goods from June if Washington does not agree to compensation for the steel tariffs in the form of lower duties on other products.
To cap this, the US has approved a bill on the agricultural sector which raises government subsidies for crop and dairy production by 67 percent.
Other EU-US trade rows are simmering, including European resistance to importing genetically modified crops, dubbed "Frankenstein foods" by critics, and an EU ban on imports of beef from cattle reared using growth-promoting hormones, a practice common in the United States.
The EU has been successful in getting global trade body the WTO to rule against the US system of corporate tax breaks for exporters.
Brussels has demanded US$4 billion in compensation for the subsidies, but the United States has asked the WTO to limit potential EU retaliation to no more than US$1 billion. The world trade body is due to rule in mid-June.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, in an interview with European journalists published on Saturday, criticized European leaders for "bashing" the US over its war on terrorism and defended against wider charges of unilateralism.
"The suggestion that somehow the United States goes its own merry way without consulting with Europe is a canard. I spend an enormous amount of time listening to my European colleagues," Powell said in Britain's Guardian newspaper.
Anthony Gooch, spokesman for Lamy, noted that the EU and the US had held a summit recently in Washington.
"We undoubtedly have problems and nobody is denying it," he told reporters during an EU-Latin America summit in Madrid.
"We have a relationship with the US that is sufficiently mature ... to be able to admit these realities. That being said, we have enormous trade with the United States and this type of problem affects a very limited part."
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS