WTO Rules on Dolphin-Safe Tuna Labeling

 

 

WTO rules against ‘dolphin safe’ tuna labels

The Hill, 5/16/12

The World Trade Organization’s appeals court on Tuesday ruled against U.S. “dolphin safe” tuna labels, in a move that will likely enrage U.S. environmental activists. The ruling could be one of the most controversial in years. The tuna/dolphin case in the early 1990s sparked protests against the WTO’s predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

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WTO final ruling in favor of fair access of Mexican tune exports to the United States

Embajada de Mexico, 5/16/12

The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body ruled in favor of Mexico and of the environment by finding that the dolphin-safe label contravenes the United States’ WTO obligations.  The ruling recognizes efforts undertaken by Mexico and Mexican fisheries to promote dolphin and marine ecosystem sustainability.

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The summary of key findings in the dispute settlement can be read here, at the WTO’s website.

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Talks Advance in Texas

Office of the United States Trade Representative, 5/16/12

The United States said today that TPP partners – Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam – made better-than-expected progress at the twelfth round of negotiations that formally concluded today outside Dallas, Texas.

U.S. negotiators have reported to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk that the progress achieved during this round has further narrowed differences in the text and the teams can now see a clear path forward toward conclusion of most of the more than 20 chapters of the agreement. A few TPP negotiating groups will continue to meet in Texas for the remainder of this week.

The TPP agreement is an important element of the Obama Administration’s efforts to support the creation and retention of high-quality jobs for Americans by increasing exports to the vibrant economies of the Asia-Pacific region. The United States and its eight partners are determined to expeditiously complete a comprehensive, next-generation agreement. During this eleven-day negotiating round, the teams focused heavily on making as much progress as possible on the texts of the agreement.

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AL DÍA: U.S.-Mexico Goods and Services Trade Reaches Half Trillion Dollars

Mexico Institute, 5/16/12

Christopher Wilson

Perhaps it is a metaphor for the bilateral economic relationship in general. Without celebration or even much recognition, U.S.-Mexico goods and services trade probably reached the major milestone of a half trillion dollars in 2011.

This incredible volume of commerce is testament to a vast network of cross-border ties that have intimately linked the economies of the United States and Mexico, forging a natural economic alliance between the two countries. In recent years, the incredible expansion in mutually beneficial bilateral commerce has gone relatively unnoticed behind the headlines about drugs and violence, despite its very real positive impact on the lives of Americans and Mexicans alike.

Bilateral trade is made not only of finished products like cars, washing machines, tomatoes and grains, but also the parts that factories on each side of the border use to build everything from small electronics to massive airplanes. In fact, it is this trade in industrial inputs that most deeply binds the U.S. and Mexican economies as the integrated North American manufacturing sector works across national boundaries to build final products for sale on the world market.

New GDAE report: U.S. Ethanol Expansion Cost Mexico Billions in Higher Import Prices

GDAE, 5/16/12

GDAE study estimates that ethanol added $1.5-$3.2 billion from 2006-11

How much have U.S. ethanol policies pushed up corn prices? And how much has these higher prices cost developing countries dependent on imports for their staple foods? According to a new Working Paper by Timothy A. Wise, Research and Policy Director at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), it cost Mexico between $1.5 and $3.2 billion from 2006 and 2011, when U.S. corn ethanol production expanded dramatically and food prices rose to alarming levels.

The Working Paper, “The Cost to Mexico of U.S. Corn Ethanol Expansion,” was released today in Mexico City on the eve of a key meeting of vice ministers of agriculture from the G-20 countries. They meet to set the G-20 agenda on food security in advance of the G-20 summit June 18-19 in Los Cabos, Mexico.

“Mexico is the chair of the G-20,” notes Wise. “The government has the opportunity to take a strong lead in that powerful body to address the underlying causes of the food crisis. Curbing the expansion of biofuels is crucial to that effort. Mexico bans the use of corn for ethanol to protect food security. Our study shows that Mexicans themselves have suffered from less restrictive U.S. biofuels policies.”

Mexico Said to Start Marketing Samurai Sale for This Month

Bloomberg-Businessweek, 5/15/12

Mexico started marketing a sale of Samurai bonds which aren’t guaranteed by the Japanese government and plans to price the notes this month, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The Latin American nation will price the three-year notes to yield from 80 basis points to 100 basis points more than the yen swap rate, said the person, asking not to be identified because the information is private.

It will also offer five-year Samurais yielding from 100 basis points to 120 basis points more than the benchmark, the person said. The bonds won’t be guaranteed by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, unlike the last two sales of the securities by Mexico, the person said.

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NAFTA key to economic, social growth in Mexico

The Washington Times, 5/14/12

The North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect in 1994, has been the key driver of Mexico’s economic and social transformation of the past 20 years, analysts say. NAFTA at first brought an explosion of low-skill-labor factories to the Mexican side of the U.S. border. By the mid-2000s, the trade pact had triggered an increasingly sophisticated manufacturing base that now reaches across Mexico’s 31 states.

“What we’re seeing now is a growth of industry in Mexico that requires more engineers,” said Christopher Wilson, an associate with the Mexico Institute at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “To put a name on it, specifically, we’re talking about automobiles and aerospace,” Mr. Wilson said. “Mexico is now graduating more engineers than Germany every year.”

A 40 percent jump in Mexico’s per capita gross domestic product since the inception of NAFTA has brought with it an increasingly robust middle class. “What that means is Mexicans are becoming more educated, and there is more investment in children, which is why you are able to see the development of an aerospace sector,” Mr. Wilson said.

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Chihuahua City is big dog in Mexico aerospace

The Washington Times, 5/14/12

When a jumbo jetliner touches down almost anywhere in the world, the last thing on the pilot’s mind is that the plane’s brakes likely were made in the capital of one of the most crime-riddled states in Mexico. Behind the headlines of warring drug gangs and a soaring murder rate in Mexico, a fast-growing high-tech economy centered on the aerospace industry has sprung up in recent years.

In Chihuahua City alone, 36 aerospace plants have opened since 2007 as a growing number of international parts makers use the city as a base for tapping a massive airplane-production market in the United States. “Our first objective was to get into the U.S. market and get a deal with U.S. customers,” said Nicolas Maillard, director of the French-owned Manoir Aerospace plant in Chihuahua City, 235 miles south of El Paso, Texas.

Shiny, precision-shaped steel discs produced by the plant are shipped to companies in Ohio and Kentucky, where they are added into the assembly line for brake systems on the Boeing Co.’s commercial airplanes. With the average cost of manufacturing labor running about $6 per hour in the city, a new era of high-tech growth is taking root. “The real advantage is the cost of labor,” Mr. Maillard said. “In France, labor would account for about 30 percent of the cost of production on an item like this. Here, it’s roughly 10 percent, and we’re closer to the market we’re trying to reach.”

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Mexican wind energy boom plays out on gusty shores

Reuters, 3/14/15

On an arid plain where sudden gusts of wind can rip roofs off buildings and knock over tractor trailers, Mexico is building a new engine for its energy future. Surrounded by towering turbines in every direction, the town of La Ventosa – which means “the windy place” in Spanish – is at the heart of a wind power boom in the country.

Mexico, the world’s 14th biggest economy, still punches well below its weight in terms of wind energy, ranking 24th on the planet in installed capacity last year, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). But the market is growing fast. By the end of this year, the national wind energy association expects Mexico to jump to number 20 on the list, which is dominated by wealthy European nations, the United States, China and India.

“We’re talking about the largest growth in wind power projects anywhere in the world,” President Felipe Calderon said recently near La Ventosa at the opening of Latin America’s largest wind park owned by Spanish company Acciona SA, a long row of turbines whirring behind him.

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Op-ed: How Mexico Can Rescue Its Brand

Vianovo, James Taylor and Michael Shannon, 5/20/12

Mexico is in need of a major brand turnaround. In the U.S. and around the globe its image has been battered. Since 2005, Americans’ views of Mexico have declined steadily, reaching their lowest point since 1993 last year, according to Gallup polling. While neighboring Canada places first in terms of overall favorability, Mexico now ranks closest to Russia and Egypt.

This brand erosion is undoubtedly a function of negative media coverage – out of a total of 200 countries, Mexico ranks 192nd in a recently published media perception index. That ranking puts Mexico in the company of war torn countries like Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria.

For anyone who follows Mexico, this should not come as a surprise. It seems as though the U.S. media rarely has anything positive to say about Mexico. A recent Woodrow Wilson Center Mexico Institute study showed that coverage of Mexico has become increasingly negative over the past two decades.

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Mexico lawmakers flag $30 billion Pemex loss in audit

Reuters, 5/8/2012

Esthela Damian, an opposition congresswoman who heads the accounting oversight committee, said she is asking federal authorities to investigate irregularities in Pemex’s accounts.

A Pemex spokesman said the accounting issue had nothing to do with fraud and was linked to a change in the financing regime to fund long-term infrastructure projects, known as Pidiregas.

The oil giant later explained in a statement that as part of those changes, the gains or losses of Pemex’s subsidiaries were transferred to the parent company from 2010.

Overhauling the state oil monopoly to introduce more efficiency and transparency is a top issue in the July 1 presidential election, since Mexico relies on oil revenues to fund around a third of the federal budget.

Damian, of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, said Pemex appeared to have scrubbed a 2009 loss of 398.6 billion pesos ($30.27 billion) from its books, and that this was later recorded as an increase in assets.

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