Dennis Shea U.S. Ambassador to the WTO arrives for the General Council meeting at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland, July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deputy US Trade Representative Dennis Shea will represent the United States at a Group of 20 trade ministers meeting in Mar del Plata, Argentina, on Friday, the USTR office said on Wednesday.

Shea, who serves as the U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, “will promote President (Donald) Trump’s priorities for free, fair and reciprocal trade, particularly the need to address non-market oriented policies,” USTR said in a statement.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer met with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday for negotiations toward a new North American Free Trade Agreement. Shea’s attendance at the G20 meeting would likely free up Lighthizer for further talks this week in Washington if they are scheduled.

A USTR spokeswoman could not be immediately reached for comment on whether additional ministerial-level NAFTA talks would be held on Thursday or Friday.

The USTR office said Shea will also hold several bilateral meetings with key trading partners, but did not specify those countries.

The G20 includes the European Union, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United States.</s>OTTAWA — Canada’s new international trade minister is taking a pass on a meeting with his G20 counterparts in Argentina on Friday.

Jim Carr was shuffled into the trade portfolio with the main purpose of diversifying Canada’s economic relations with countries other than the United States, its largest trading partner.

The G20 also includes China, India and Brazil — countries that Canada is keen to expand economic ties with.

Carr’s spokesman says the minister will be attending an event in his home province of Manitoba on Friday, and that Canada will be represented at the G20 meeting by the Canada’s deputy minister for international trade.

Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative, will also be replaced by a deputy at the gathering of G20 trade ministers, fuelling speculation he might be holding his schedule open for a meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, his political counterpart in the ongoing renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Canadian and American negotiators were continuing their talks today after Freeland’s latest visit to Washington on Tuesday.

Freeland briefed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the state of the NAFTA talks at the Liberal caucus retreat in Saskatoon on Wednesday.

Afterwards, she said lead negotiator Steve Verheul and David MacNaughton, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, would return to Washington to resume negotiations today.

The G20 leaders’ summit is set for later this fall in Buenos Aires.</s>JOHANNESBURG - South Africa's trade and industry minister Rob Davies will attend a meeting with peers from the G20 global grouping in Argentina set to focus on the agriculture sector, his department said on Tuesday.

The meeting will take place from 30 November 2018 – 1 December 2018.

It will be held in 2018 in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It will be the first-ever G20 summit to be hosted in South America.

The G20 or Group of Twenty is an international forum for the governments of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States which aims to discuss policy to promote international financial stability.

"The trade ministers meeting will focus on key factors for G20 policy making to support participation and upgrading in inclusive global value chains in the agricultural sector at regional and global level," the department of trade and industry said.

"It will also provide a platform for an exchange of experiences on how G20 countries can address the challenges associated with disruptive changes presented by the new industrial revolution ... and leverage the opportunities in order to advance inclusive growth."

Davies said the meeting was taking place amid unprecedented challenges for the multilateral trading system, with the rise of trade measures that were not compatible with the World Trade Organisation posing a concern.

"The G20 trade ministers meeting will provide an opportunity for a dialogue on current developments in international trade and its implications for the global economy," he said.</s>OTTAWA — Canada's new international trade minister is taking a pass on a meeting with his G20 counterparts in Argentina on Friday.

Jim Carr was shuffled into the trade portfolio with the main purpose of diversifying Canada's economic relations with countries other than the United States, its largest trading partner.

The G20 also includes China, India and Brazil — countries that Canada is keen to expand economic ties with.

Carr's spokesman says the minister will be attending an event in his home province of Manitoba on Friday, and that Canada will be represented at the G20 meeting by the Canada's deputy minister for international trade.</s>NEW DELHI: India is discussing its bilateral trade issues with the US as part of a ‘trade package’ of mutual concerns and no separate trade agreement is being thought of, commerce department officials told ET.US President Donald Trump earlier this week said India is keen on a ‘trade deal’ while early this year, US ambassador to India Kenneth Juster had called for an eventual free trade agreement between the world’s two largest democracies.A trade pact is unlikely to benefit India as tariffs on most goods are already low in the US, not leaving much scope for further reduction, officials said. Moreover, the US has been tightening non-immigrant visa norms, which is India’s key interest area.“We have been discussing a trade package of mutual concerns. There is no such trade agreement as a free or preferential trade pact,” said an official in the know of the development.Trump's announcement came at a time when the two sides are in the process of resolving their bilateral trade issues, which include the US levying higher tariffs on Indian steel and aluminium, and reviewing Indian exports' eligibility for preferential duties.On goods, India’s average tariffs are between 13% and 14% while the US’ are less than 4%, leaving a huge gap for India to reduce duties. India's exports to the US in 2017-18 amounted to $47.9 billion, while imports were $26.7 billion. Delhi has said the two sides have not fixed a target to bridge the trade gap as both countries have a limited ability to commit a trade value for future years as most trade would be done by private parties.“We can’t reject or accept a trade agreement without a feasibility study,” the official said.A Delhi-based trade expert said this is the US’ strategy to get into bilateral trade pacts and ultimately arm twist developing countries to get its way around at the World Trade Organization.“A trade agreement with the US would mean India would have to compromise on its digital future as they are reluctant on free flow of data,” said another expert on trade issues.</s>“I am delighted to have hosted Ambassador Gerrish on his first visit to the UK since taking up his post. During our productive meeting, we reaffirmed our shared ambition to boost the trade relationship between the UK and US, which is already worth around £165 billion a year.

“The Chequers proposals give us the flexibility to negotiate free trade agreements after we leave the European Union, and the Government’s current public consultations on future FTAs, including with the US, are critical to our preparations.

“Our joint Trade and Investment Working Group has made good progress in laying the groundwork for such a negotiation and helping our businesses grow their exports, including through our joint SME dialogue and published toolkits. To maintain this positive momentum, we agreed the third SME dialogue will take place in New York in November and the working group will reconvene in Washington DC soon afterwards.

“We also discussed wider global trade challenges and the on-going U.S.-EU trade discussions. I expressed UK support for progress in these discussions, including finding resolutions to existing U.S.-EU trade disagreements, such as steel and aluminium tariffs.”

“It was a pleasure meeting with Minister George Hollingbery today at the UK’s Department for International Trade. We had a productive meeting, discussing a range of U.S.-UK trade issues.

“The U.S.-UK trade and investment relationship is already substantial. We have two-way trade in goods and services of over $230 billion annually, with each of us being the other’s largest single supplier of services and a top supplier of goods. We are also both each other’s largest source of foreign investment with nearly $1.3 trillion invested in each other’s economies.

“Of course, we hope to further deepen and expand this beneficial relationship – both now and following Brexit.

“We reviewed the progress made so far through our U.S.-UK Trade and Investment Working Group, which has met four times since it was established by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and UK Secretary of State Liam Fox last year. In November, the United States will host the UK delegation in Washington for the fifth meeting of the Working Group, as well as host the third meeting of the U.S.-UK Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) Dialogue in New York.

“We also discussed our broader trade relationship, including on-going discussions with the EU on reducing barriers to U.S.-EU trade and addressing the challenges faced by both our economies due to non-market-oriented policies and unfair trade practices of third countries.”</s>To my fellow Canadians, and to our friends in the United States and Mexico: I write to ask you to join #FreeMyTrade! — a new effort to rescue all of us, and all citizens of the world, from the incoherent menace known as the NAFTA talks and from the endless tyrannies of the regulated global trading system.

Have you had enough of the near hourly reports on the status of trade negotiations? Are you fed up with prime ministers, presidents and other pontificating politicians on all sides delivering warnings, threats and positions on milk supply, cultural industries, auto trade, digital trade, trade imbalances, wage rates, tariffs, quotas, customs duties, labour conditions, rules of origin, social issues, investment rules, dispute settlements?

The prime objective of this overdue movement is to take trade out of the hands of politicians, economists, lawyers, bureaucrats, media commentators, union leaders and wonks who in effect make a living preventing all of us — as individuals — from enjoying our fundamental right to free exchange.
• William Watson: Is Trump rational? Unfortunately for Canada, the answer is yes.
• William Watson: Trump is all for complete free trade — except when it comes to cars
• Lawrence Solomon: Trump just unveiled the new trade world order. Canada not included

We should, instead, embed the right to free trade in our constitutions, our charters of freedom and in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights.

The starting point for understanding the right to free trade can be found in the foundational ideas of two Enlightenment thinkers, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. As Smith explained in 1776, individuals do not make at home what costs less to buy from someone else. The same applies to trade that happens to flow between nations. “If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it from them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.”

If there’s a problem with this simple summary of Smith’s argument, it is the implication that nations produce and supply goods and services. They do not. Nations do nothing. It is the individuals within a nation, acting as individuals or in association with others via corporations or other organizing structures, who are the engines of production, consumption and trade.

Exceptions can be made for national defence purposes, but we are the producers. And we are the consumers. Nations — governments, politicians, lobbyists, bureaucrats, corporate protectionists, unions — have no right to any part of the general trade equation. As individual consumers and producers, we should hold the right to buy and sell our goods and services on our own terms — whether those transactions involve people across the street, in another province or state, or in another country.

We don’t need trade agreements telling us what we can and cannot buy and sell, in what quantity and at what price. And none of us should be subject to the impositions of the trade regimentalists who are constantly subverting our rights.

As Canadians, for example, we have a right to buy French brie and Italian Parmesan free of the quotas and markups embedded in our trade protectionist system. We should not tolerate insulting grocery store labels that offer “Swiss Emmental” cheese that’s made in Canada behind a tariff wall that keeps out Emmental actually fermented in Switzerland.

Under the right to free trade, individual consumers should make the decisions on electronic goods from China, clothing from Vietnam, shoes from Italy. We the consumers should control the cars we buy — whether made in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Germany or South Korea. It’s our economic right, and not the right of a politician or an automobile executive or some union leader to decide how much foreign content auto products should contain, or what automotive wage rates should be. Trade deal makers should have no right to impose tariffs and quotas that raise consumer prices and reduce supply.

Economist Bo Sodersten summarized trade as human right thusly, “For Smith, as for Ricardo, the supreme subject of economics was the consumer. Man labored and produced in order to consume.” The objective of trade was to increase “the sum of enjoyments.”

Since the 1950s, global trade has soared from 20 per cent of world GDP to 60 per cent, the result of allowing consumers everywhere the benefits of expanding trade freedom, dramatically raising living standards and the sum of enjoyments. We need more.

The UN Human Rights Declaration states that all human beings are “born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Everyone, it adds in Article 3, has a “right to life, liberty and security of person.”

No right captures the spirit of brotherhood more than the exercise of free exchange and trade. We need a new addition to the declaration, Article 3a: “Everyone has the right to free trade.”</s>Australia's new Trade Minister Simon Birmingham will fly into a $US500 billion global trade firestorm at the G20 in Argentina, warning his US and Chinese counterparts not to further "inflame" tensions when he meets them for the first time on Friday.

The escalating trade dispute is threatening to derail the global economic recovery, by hammering business confidence and driving up costs for consumers.

US President Donald Trump rattled markets after threatening to add tariffs of between 10 and 25 per cent to another $US267 billion worth of technology, clothing and manufacturing products imported from China last week, on top of $US200 billion that is planned and $US50 billion already in force.

Senator Birmingham said "global challenges could be overcome" but Australia would look to go around the conflict and ramp up negotiations with the European Union and India as a buffer to any trade fallout between the two superpowers.

"People said after the collapse of the Doha world trade negotiations [in 2008] that progress was likely to be halted, but since then Australia has demonstrated that you can charge ahead with bilaterals that deliver real benefits to our nation," Senator Birmingham told Fairfax Media from Mar Del Plata in Argentina.</s>Increasingly convinced that the trade war with the United States is unlikely to end soon, Beijing is stepping up its charm offensive to reassure foreign politicians and business leaders of its commitment to global free trade by opening and reforming its domestic economy.

And next week’s “Summer Davos” – or the World Economic Forum’s Twelfth Annual Meeting of the New Champions – in Tianjin will serve as the next occasion for Beijing to outline its stance.

“The Chinese government has high expectations for the conference,” Xia Qing, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission’s international department, said on Wednesday.

It was at the World Economic Forum at Davos in January last year that President Xi Jinping made a now-famous keynote speech defending free trade while opposing the rising tide of protectionism. Xi sought to portray China as the new leading champion of globalisation.

“As the trade war is tending to escalate, [China] is sending strong signals that it will firmly promote globalisation, trade liberalisation, that it will support the Belt and Road Initiative and actively respond to global technological changes,” Xia said.

Premier Li Keqiang is scheduled to address the Tianjin conference on Wednesday. The more than 2,000 delegates at the three-day meeting, which begins on Tuesday, will include central bank governor Yi Gang, finance minister Liu Kun and many business leaders from China and abroad, according to the World Economic Forum.

“As the commerce ministry mentioned earlier, we do not want to fight a trade war, but we’re also not afraid of one. We’ll continue with our existing guidelines and policies and try to push cooperation with all kinds of organisations,” Xia said.

The world’s two largest economies have been engaged in a tit-for-tat trade war since early July, with both sides levying 25 per cent tariffs on US$50 billion of each other’s imports so far. US President Donald Trump said last week his administration was ready to impose tariffs on an additional US$200 billion worth of Chinese goods “very soon”, and could even sanction a further US$267 billion in Chinese goods if Beijing did not offer any trade concessions.

Bilateral negotiations in late August at the deputy minister level produced no sign that bilateral tensions would end soon.

The US trade sanctions are seen by Beijing as the biggest challenge to economic growth, putting pressure on Chinese businesses and consumers while delivering a heavy blow to domestic financial markets.

In late July, the Politburo, the country’s top decision-making body chaired by President Xi Jinping, made stabilisation of the economy the government’s key priority. The government has boosted infrastructure spending and loosened monetary conditions in an effort to prevent a large drop in economic growth.

Despite spiralling trade war, China likely to be a non-factor for US voters in midterm elections

US-China trade tensions and the country’s economic restructuring will also be discussed at two other conferences – hosted by the China Development Forum and the Chinese Economists 50 Forum – to be held in Beijing ahead of Summer Davos.

Tianjin and Dalian, the two Chinese port cities that have hosted the annual Summer Davos conference on a rotating basis since 2007, have fallen on difficult economic times in recent years, as foreign direct investment and exports have been hit hard and domestic investment has slowed due to the government programme to reduce risky, off-balance-sheet lending.

Why US trade war is less to blame for China’s economic slowdown than the home-grown deleveraging campaign

Tianjin, about 100km east of Beijing, reported a 3.4 per cent rise in local GDP in the first half of this year, the second slowest growth rate among China’s 31 provinces.

Zhao Haishan, deputy mayor of Tianjin, said the city was trying to boost foreign investment, open certain sectors wider, and seek cooperation with foreign firms in areas such as finance, information consultancy, and technological innovation.

“The ongoing economic transformation and upgrading [of Chinese industry] are making high demands on Tianjin, an old industrial base,” Zhao said.

“Through the opportunity [presented by the Summer Davos conference], [we’ll] organise scholars and entrepreneurs to deepen discussions and seek better cooperation,” he said.</s>BERLIN (Reuters) - The mood among German investors brightened unexpectedly for the second month in a row in September, a survey showed on Tuesday, as concerns about an escalating tit-for-tat trade dispute faded.

The ZEW research institute said its monthly survey showed economic sentiment among investors improved to -10.6 from -13.7 in August. This compared with the Reuters consensus forecast for a reading of -14.0.

“During the survey period, the currency crises in Turkey and Argentina intensified, while German industrial production and incoming orders were surprisingly low in July,” ZEW President Achim Wambach said in a statement.

The ZEW survey comes after the influential Ifo survey showed German business sentiment picked up for the first time this year in August.

German exports and industrial output both fell unexpectedly in July, hit by U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist trade policies and bottlenecks in the auto sector caused by new environmental standards.

“Despite these unfavourable circumstances, economic expectations for Germany improved slightly,” Wambach said, adding that fears regarding economic development had diminished following a trade deal between the United States and Mexico.

Trump has struck a trade deal with Mexico and threatened to update the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) without Canada.

Moving ahead without Canada would kill NAFTA, which covers $1.2 trillion in trade between the three countries, and spook financial markets. But Canada’s top trade negotiator said on Friday that she and her U.S. counterpart were making “very good progress” in talks to save NAFTA.

A separate ZEW gauge measuring investors’ assessment of the economy’s current conditions rose to 76.0 from 72.6 in the previous month. The Reuters consensus forecast was for a reading of 72.0.
Deputy US Trade Representative Dennis Shea will represent the United States at the Group of 20 trade ministerial meeting in Argentina.