This article is the first in a series of pieces Borderlex is planning to publish over the autumn 2019 to take stock of the European Union’s trade defence instrument policy at a critical turning point both in the multilateral trading system and in the EU’s trade defence practices. Since 2014, …
Defensive trade policy
Week in Brussels: Duties on fasteners from Malaysia 2.0, elephant trade, G7
It’s been a fairly quiet week in Brussels as befits any last week of August in Europe. But quiet weeks are good moments for ‘interesting’ moves by the European Commission’s antidumping directorate. This week we saw among others an extension of bike antidumping duties from China on grounds that look …
Bicycles: 30 years of trade protection for a profitable EU industry
Today the European Commission extended for another five years anti-dumping duties on bicycles imported from China. The duties, which range from 19.2% to 48.5% also apply to imports from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Cambodia and the Philippines inasmuch as they involve Chinese inputs. Japanese and Taiwanese-owned companies operating out of …
Long read – Self reliance: the emerging EU trade policy trend in a hostile world
The European Commission no longer seems to trust global norms, fora or rule-making negotiations to uphold its interests in digital, competition, industry and trade policy. In fact many norms hardly exist and won’t likely emerge so quickly. The EU’s executive arm has been rethinking its policy toolkit and is seeking …
Week in Brussels: Russian WTO steel case against EU, procurement reciprocity, Korean labour
China and EU-US trade relations dominated the news this week. Here’s a selection of what else happened. EU to face new Russian WTO complaint over steel anti-dumping duties This week in Geneva, Russia requested a panel in a dispute filed in February 2017 against the EU’s anti-dumping duties on cold-rolled …
EU anti-dumping policy: Less defensive, more offensive
There has been a lot of talk about EU trade defence policy recently. The focus is on the EU’s recent steel safeguard measures. In Brussels and some member states such as France, Italy, and increasingly in Germany, the public discussion focuses on the ‘defence’ aspect of the EU’s trade remedies …
More WTO members announce retaliation against EU steel safeguards
The European Union introduced a safeguard against imports of steel last January. The move was made in response to the United States import restrictions on steel under Section 232 in 2018 and aims to avoid the European market from being flooded by metal diverted away from North America. But Brussels’ …
A week in Brussels: Brexit, IPI, where is the Vietnam FTA?
So, dear friends, we are going into a week-end with the United Kingdom ready to default into a no-deal Brexit on 12 April. Or most likely there will be a long extension of its EU membership, and potentially general (and European) elections…. This week was dominated by wrangles between France …
EU and Argentina bury hatchet over biodiesel duties
The EU and Argentina ended six years of disagreements over the South American country’s exports of biodiesel to the bloc with a compromise that averts years of litigation in courts.
Commission decision on US soy comes in handy for biodiesel producers
The ongoing trade ‘negotiations’ between the European Union and the United States are a good opportunity to try to resolve old gripes that the US holds against the EU’s import regime. One of the irritants the European Commission has tried to defuse under the shadow of a US threat to …