by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Mexico City : Mexico, Canada and the US will hold their eighth round of negotiations to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement in early April, and to accelerate the process they will conduct a series of working meetings – involving cabinet officers – before the talks, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said on Monday.
At a press conference after the end of the seventh round of talks to update NAFTA, Guajardo said that the new round will take place during the “first part of April,” meaning that authorities in the three member nations have “five weeks” to consider their options and prepare, Efe reported.
“It’s not that there’s just going to be one meeting, but rather a working group” will hold assorted meetings in Washington, Mexico City, Ottawa and Toronto.
Moreover, negotiators will discuss working agendas regarding “associated issues that are very close to being resolved.”
He also said that during the coming five weeks the ministers tasked with recrafting and updating NAFTA, which went into effect in 1994 and the renegotiation of which US President Donald Trump had demanded, will be in contact with one another and meet to begin “getting an idea about comprehensive solutions” on issues of “great complexity.”
Guajardo said that the site for the eighth negotiation round has yet to be established, but it is expected that it will be in Washington since the sixth round was held in Montreal and the seventh – which lasted from Feb. 25 through March 5 – in the Mexican capital.
He said that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government is ready to negotiate up until the last day of his presidency, Nov. 30.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said that the new pact should be concluded “quickly” because of the nearness of the Mexican presidential election – scheduled for July 1 – and the US mid-term elections in November.
Lighthizer said Monday that it was regrettable that negotiators had only managed to conclude discussions on three of the issue areas during the seventh round, although Guajardo was more positive and said that now agreement had been reached on six of the 30 NAFTA issues areas.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : At least seven people were killed and over one million left without power as a massive storm continued to pummel the US East Coast on Saturday with drenching rain, howling winds and surging waves. The nor’easter also brought travel services to a halt.
The fatalities included a six-year-old boy in Virginia who died after a tree fell on his family’s home. Others were an 11-year-old boy in New York state; a 57-year-old man in Upper Merion, Pennsylvania; a 77-year-old woman in Baltimore; a 72-year-old man in Newport, Rhode Island and a 44-year-old man in James City County, Virginia, ABC News reported.
All were hit by falling trees. There was one more storm-related death, according to officials.
The storm that morphed into a “bomb cyclone” knocked out power to more than one million customers — with more than 440,000 of them in Massachusetts. Virginia had at least 301,671 customers without power, and the Washington area counted over 154,000 people without power.
Over 4,000 flights were cancelled in the US on Friday, according to FlightAware. Nearly half of all scheduled flights at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport were cancelled on Saturday, the airport said.
Rail operator Amtrak temporarily halted service between New York, Boston and Washington. It tweeted on Friday that its Northeast Corridor service was “temporarily suspended due to multiple weather related issues”.
Airlines, including Delta, United and Southwest, were offering fee waivers for flight cancellations or changes involving affected airports. Airports on the East Coast had been experiencing delays and ground stops, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Massachusetts was hit hard by the storm. High tides powered coastal flooding in Boston and other towns, leaving city streets awash for the second time since a massive nor’easter in early January, CNN reported.
A foot (30 cm) of snow fell on northern and western areas of New York state.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam had declared a state of emergency in order to marshal resources and “appropriate preparedness, response, and recovery measures”, according to a statement.
In the Washington area, federal offices didn’t open, schools closed and trash collection was suspended. The wind even directed its wrath at the Capitol, blowing out a window on the west front over the Olmstead Terrace, an official from the Architect of the Capitol office said.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “March is coming in like a lion”.
The storm was moving slowly and the wind, rain and flood effects will linger for days, officials said. Parts of eastern Long Island and eastern Massachusetts were predicted to get up to five inches of rain through Saturday.
The rest of the region could see two to four inches of rain. A foot of snow had already fallen in parts of eastern Massachusetts.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump reacted combatively to widespread criticism of his plan to impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium to protect domestic producers.
“When a country (the US) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” he tweeted on Friday night.
“Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!,” he added.
The President’s announcement on Thursday that he will order tariffs of 25 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively, on imported steel and aluminium, spurred a 420-point drop on the New York Stock Exchange and expressions of alarm.
Some of the sharpest criticism of the planned tariffs came from Trump’s fellow Republicans, most of them ardent free-traders.
“Kooky 18th century protectionism will jack up prices on American families – and will prompt retaliation from other countries,” Senator Ben Sasse said in a statement.
“Make no mistake: If the President goes through with this, it will kill American jobs – that’s what every trade war ultimately does,” the Nebraska Republican said.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said that US workers and firms could suffer from “unintended consequences” if the tariffs were imposed, while European Commission chairman Jean-Claude Juncker was one of several international leaders threatening retaliation for the levies.
Roberto Azevedo, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), broke with his usual practice by commenting publicly on Trump’s announcement.
“The WTO is clearly concerned at the announcement of US plans for tariffs on steel and aluminium. The potential for escalation is real, as we have seen from the initial responses of others. A trade war is in no one’s interests,” Azevedo said.
Asked on Friday about the negative reception to Trump’s tariff idea, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that the President was not concerned and that he remained “pretty committed” to moving this forward.
Paradoxically, Trump’s proposal got a much warmer response from some Democrats, such as Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who described the tariffs as “long overdue” action to aid steelworkers in his state.
Trump also won plaudits from the country’s largest labour federation.
“For years, we have called attention to the predatory practices of some steel exporting countries,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. “This is a great first step toward addressing trade cheating.”
The President’s decision was not unanimously popular within his own administration.
Gary D. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, “threatened to resign if the White House followed through with stiff and sweeping tariffs, according to people who have spoken with him in recent days”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : Following the US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would impose tariffs on the importation of steel and aluminum products, Canada on Thursday termed the decision as “unacceptable”, vowing to take “responsive measures”.
Trump said on Thursday that he would impose 25 per cent of tariff on steel imports and 10 per cent for aluminum to protect the US industry. However, experts said it could hurt US producers and face legal challenges from trade partners.
“As a key NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and NATO ally, and as the number one customer of American steel, Canada would view any trade restrictions on Canadian steel and aluminum as absolutely unacceptable,” Xinhua quoted Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland as saying.
In a meeting with business executives, Trump said: “We’ll be signing it next week. And you’ll have protection for a long time in a while.”
News of the tariffs immediately hit sentiment on the Wall Street, with the Dow slumping over 500 points, more than two per cent, in late trading.
Daniel Ikenson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, said that trade restrictions could hurt US producers by exposing them to competitions from foreign rivals with lower production costs capable of offering lower prices in the US market.
US actions would face legal challenge by other World Trade Organization members, and they would also invite other members to invoke national security to protect favoured industries, said Ikenson.
European Union (EU)’s trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom has said that EU would seek retaliation measures if the Trump administration’s 232 trade investigation brings damage to European steelmakers.
It’s still unknown whether Trump’s announcement on Thursday refer to blanket tariffs for all countries.
In April last year, Trump ordered the Commerce Department to study the impact of steel and aluminum imports on national security under seldom-used section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act.
Two weeks ago, the Commerce Department unveiled its recommendations for Trump to restrict imports of steel and aluminium products due to national security concerns, which drew opposition from US lawmakers and businesses.
According to the recommendations, the US could introduce at least 24 per cent tariff on all steel imports from all countries and at least 7.7 per cent tariff on all aluminium imports from all countries.
Trump’s announcement on Thursday was higher than both recommendations.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Technology
Washington : Is it incumbent on an American company to turn over data to law enforcement agencies when demanded even if such data are stored overseas? This issue is at the core of a case involving Microsoft that the the US Supreme Court is set to hear on Tuesday.
The case could have far reaching implications with regard to privacy concerns of international customers of American technology companies on the one hand and law enforcement access to digital data on the other.
The litigation turns on a 1986 law, the Stored Communications Act, passed long before American companies began storing massive amounts of data outside US borders, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.
The case began in 2013 when federal agents conducting a drug investigation obtained a warrant for a suspect’s emails.
But the emails that they were stored in Dublin, Ireland, and Microsoft argued that the warrant could not reach beyond US borders.
Microsoft says it stores emails close to their owner in order to make retrieval faster and, according to the tech giant, the Government did not suggested that the concerned individual resided in the US.
Microsoft has framed the case as one of digital privacy.
E. Joshua Rosenkranz, who will argue Microsoft’s case, called the government’s position “a recipe for global chaos,” the Post reported.
“If ever there were a step that is sure to stoke international tension, it is sidestepping the treaties that were negotiated by countries precisely to protect their sovereignty, and instead unilaterally obtaining reams of personal letters….If another country did this to us, we would be outraged at the most basic level,” Rosenkranz was quoted as saying.
Microsoft reportedly has the backing of major US technology giants including Google and IBM.
The case centres on the Stored Communications Act’s (SCA) territorial reach, and the government argues that the SCA focuses on the emails’ “disclosure” and that Microsoft employees could retrieve them “without leaving their desks in the United States,” the Post reported.
—IANS
