Mexico said on Monday it would increase tariffs on about 90 US products in retaliation for last week’s decision to end a pilot program that allowed some Mexican trucks to transport goods in the US.
Mexican Economy Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said the US decision violated a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that was supposed to have opened cross-border trucking by January 2000.
“We consider this US action to be wrong, protectionist and a clear violation of the treaty,” Ruiz Mateos told reporters. “By deciding to protect their trucking industry, they have decided to affect other countries and the region.”
The measure will affect about US$2.4 billion in trade involving approximately 90 agricultural and industrial products from 40 US states. Ruiz Mateos said the department later this week would publish a list of the products, which he said were chosen to represent a large number of US states and significant trade items.
He did not specify how much tariffs would be increased, but said “the retaliatory measures are the cost the United States is going to have to pay for failing to fulfill its obligations under NAFTA.”
The action alarmed Representative Kevin Brady, the ranking Republican on the trade subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee. Wheat and beef are two of his states top three exports.
“We’ve got a tough economy. We are going to lose sales, [agricultural] sales of exports that we are selling into Mexico and that may well go to other countries,” he said. “If you raise [duties], our wheat or beef may not be competitive to Mexico consumers.”
A pilot program begun in 2007 that had allowed a few Mexican trucks beyond a border buffer zone died last week when US President Barack Obama signed a sweeping government bill that barred spending on it.
But the administration said Obama had asked the office of the US Trade Representative to work with the US Department of Transportation, State Department and Congress to create a new trucking program.
Representative Sander Levin, a Democrat who chairs the Ways and Means trade subcommittee, said he was “disappointed that the Mexican government has decided to retaliate, given that the Obama administration has publicly committed itself to working with the Congress and the Mexican government to address this and related issues.”
Activists and industry associations in the US had argued that Mexican trucks were unsafe.
“No trade agreement should obligate us to compromise our highway safety,” said Senator Byron Dorgon, a Democrat.
But Ruiz Mateos said the Mexican trucks crossing the border were safe: “The Mexican trucks even exceeded the US safety standards in some cases.”
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS