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endlingmusings · 1 year ago

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[ Several captive Southern white rhinoceroses. ]

“John Hume, the owner of the world’s largest private rhino herd, is auctioning off his rhino farm, the starting bid being US$10 million. The question is, what are Hume’s rhinos really worth?

In recent weeks there have been quite a few emotional appeals from John Hume and his supporters to ‘see the value’ in what is being offered. I get that many people believe that this is John Hume’s life’s work, but the US$150 million the one-time billionaire reportedly spent on this enterprise is, in business terms, the project’s sunk cost. It is a business risk he chose to take, as he farmed rhinos with a view to selling the horn.

When he started, over a decade ago, the international sale of rhino horn was already banned and the domestic trade was banned in South Africa for a number of years until John Hume and Johan Kruger launched legal action, saying it is their constitutional right to sell rhino horn. Izak du Toit, the lawyer who represented the rhino owners to overturn the domestic trade ban, and who appears to be Hume’s legal representative in the current auction, said at the time, [If the domestic trade ban was overturned] “We would sell [rhino horn] to the poachers to prevent them from killing rhinos,”.

With all the effort to overturn rhino horn trade sanctions, both domestically and international, there was always an inherent risk in Hume’s strategy that the trade ban would remain, and he accepted this risk as legalising the trade in rhino horn was the only way to recuperate his investment. Hume has said that his 10-tonne of stockpile of rhino horns is negotiable as part of the current auction, adding that it is worth more than US$500 million on the black market. A curious message to give out.

The fact that there is still a ban on the international trade of rhino horn doesn’t change the lack of trying by Hume and other South African private rhino owners. Over the years they put forward models for a ‘regulated’, international legal trade in rhino horn. The business plans have loopholes big enough for a Mack truck to drive through and, in all this time, they have never invested in a consumer analysis. The pro-trade supporters have previously stated that, “What they [rhino horns] are used for is hardly relevant. The fact is that people are willing to pay.”. Even now, after more than a decade of pushing to legalise the international trade, the response to the FAQ page question, “Does anyone know what the demand for rhino horn is?” is, “There is no reliable data on the size of the market. The best way to determine the characteristics of a market is to engage in legal trade.”. Mmm, quite a risky approach if your goal is to save rhinos from poaching.

At least now they acknowledge that an international trade won’t stop rhino poaching, the response to the FAQ page question, “Doesn’t the market value ‘wild’ horn more than harvested?” is, “Possibly, yes. If there is a preference for ‘wild’ or whole horn, this will be reflected in the price buyers are willing to pay.”. A far cry from their earlier, evidence free, assertions that the supply from the privately owned rhinos in South Africa could satisfy demand in Viet Nam and China and that consumers would be willing to substitute farmed horn for horn from wild rhinos.

Legalising the trade in ivory for two massive one-off sales did not stop elephant poaching, it made it worse. There is every reason to believe the same would happen with rhino horn – as soon as you can legalise advertise you can create new demand; something else they have never been willing to factor into their pro-trade push. Further, those who can afford genuine rhino horn will pay for a ‘wild’ product. Consumers have been known to ask for the tail/ears of the rhino to be presented with the horn to show it was killed in the process and the horn didn’t come from a stockpile.

This rhino sale mess is a perfect demonstration of the misguided obsession with the commercialisation of wild species. John Hume and the other private rhino owners managed to overturn the ban on domestic trade in South Africa, but that did not create a market for a product nobody needs. Hume’s rhino horn auction in 2017 was a flop, as was his later attempt to launch a cryptocurrency backed by rhino horn.

John Hume’s 2,000 rhinos and his reported 10 tonne stockpile of rhino horn have zero commercial value as long as the international trade remains closed. Reinstating the South African domestic trade in rhino horn was seen a precursor to overturning the international trade ban, providing hope for the pro-trade rhino owners. The result was they were happy to devalue rhino horn from a poaching perspective but they have never wanted to devalue horn from a consumer perspective, as they didn’t want to undermine the potential for future profits.”

- Excerpt from “What Are John Hume’s Rhinos Really Worth?” by Lynn Johnson.

#Conservation #Poaching #Southern white rhinoceros #Southern white rhino #Mammal #NT #Article #Text #Photo #Live specimen #Captive #Upload

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head-post · 27 days ago

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US President-elect Trump names first administration veterans Greer, Hassett to economic posts

US President-elect Donald Trump is turning to two officials with experience not only in Washington but also in key issues such as income taxes and tariffs when forming his economic team, US media reported.

On Tuesday, Trump announced that he had chosen international trade lawyer Jamieson Greer to be the US Trade Representative and Kevin Hassett to be the director of the White House National Economic Council.

While in a number of cases Trump has appointed people from the outside to key positions, the appointments reflect a recognition that his reputation will depend on restoring public confidence in the economy.

The President-elect also announced a number of other key personnel decisions, including Vince Haley, who led the speechwriting department in Trump’s first term, as director of the Domestic Policy Council.

In a statement, Trump noted that in his first term, Greer was instrumental in enacting tariffs against China and other countries, as well as replacing the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, “making it much better for American workers.”

Greer previously served as chief of staff to Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s former trade representative, who is deeply sceptical of free trade. Greer is currently a partner at the law firm King & Spalding in Washington.

If confirmed as trade representative, Greer would be responsible for negotiating directly with foreign governments on trade deals and disputes, as well as membership in international trade bodies such as the World Trade Organisation.

He told The New York Times in June that Trump officials believe the tariffs “can help support US manufacturing jobs, especially to the extent that they correct unfair trade practices.”

His appointment came a day after Trump promised to impose huge new tariffs on foreign goods entering the US – including a 25 per cent tax on all goods entering the country from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10 per cent tariff on goods from China – as one of his first executive orders.

As director of the White House National Economic Council, Hassett brought one of the Trump administration’s top proponents of tax cuts.

Trump said Hassett would “play an important role in helping American families recover from the inflation unleashed by the Biden administration” and that together they would “renew and improve�� the 2017 tax cuts, many of which expire after 2025.

Hassett, 62, served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during Trump’s first term. He earned his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and worked at the right-liberal American Enterprise Institute before Trump entered the White House in 2017.

In Hassett’s farewell statement in 2019, Trump called him a “true friend” who did a “great job.” Hassett became a fellow at the Hoover Institution, based at Stanford University. He later returned to the administration to help manage the pandemic.

In Trump’s second term, Hassett will join a White House seeking to preserve and expand tax cuts enacted in 2017 at a time when budget deficits are weighing on the cost of federal borrowing.

Also announced on Tuesday was the nomination of private investor, campaign donor and art collector John Phelan, who was selected to be Secretary of the Navy. Phelan co-founded MSD Capital, the private equity firm of Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies. It is not known whether Phelan served in the Navy or the Army.

Read more HERE

#world news #world politics #news #usa #usa politics #usa news #united states #america #united states of america #us politics #donald trump #2024 election #trump 2024 #republicans #trump administration #greer #phelan #hassett

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scotianostra · 1 year ago

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James Nicolas Sutherland Matheson was born on October 17th 1896 at Shiness, near Lairg, Sutherland.

The was the son of a Scottish trader in India. After attending the University of Edinburgh he also became a trader in India and in 1832 he co-founded Jardine-Matheson company in Canton (Guangzhou) with the aim of trading opium, tea and other goods with China.

I’m not going to beat about the bush, Matheson wasn’t a nice guy, he persuaded the Government to wage war with China, which had rejected proposals to legalise opium. The drug had become a problem for the Chinese Government who tried to abolish the trade by confiscation and port blockade.

The subsequent Treaty of Nanking in 1842 allowed Jardine Matheson to expand its business empire from Canton to Hong Kong and mainland China.

There was some good points in his life, in 1844 Matheson bought the Isle of Lewis for more than £500,000 from the bankrupt estate of the MacKenzies of Seaforth. Construction of the Castle, which was built on the site of the Seaforth Lodge, commenced in 1847 and took seven years to complete. During his period of ownership of the island Matheson provided employment, funded famine relief and engaged in many other social and economic projects to the benefit of the whole community, spending some £329,000 by 1850.

However.

As well as Lewis he also took charge of the Island adjoining it - Bernera. He appointed a solicitor to be his factor, Donald Munro. Munro was soon seen to be heavy handed, and his evictions were naturally unpopular. In 1874 Donald Munro went a step too far for the crofters - he sent in a Sheriff Officer to Bernera to serve 58 eviction notices.

Really, there was no just cause for this action and it was greeted with utter disbelief! When the bailiffs arrived at Tobson they were pelted with a shower of clods of earth. The sheriff officer also had his coat torn and he issued a threat saying that “ if he had a gun may Bernera mothers would be mourning the loss of their sons”.

After three crofters were singled out and arrested hundreds of Bernera men with pipers at the front marched on Lews Castle, Stornoway. They demanded an audience with Matheson himself. Matheson who was somewhat aged at the time disowned Donald Munro, who came to be dismissed in 1875. It has become known as the Bernera Riot.

The Bernera court case of 1874 is the first documented victory for Highland crofters and correctly holds its place as the opening shot of the crofters fight-back which led to the Napier Commission and land reform. The prisoners were acquitted following the brilliant performance of the Inverness lawyer Charles Innes. Mr Innes’s name is still revered in Bernera today. This case was a most welcome victory for the crofters and it inspired many more to revolt.

Stones from every croft on Bernera and Tir Mor are incorporated in this cairn and the coping stones are taken from the houses of the three men who stood trial.

Matheson died in 1878 at the age of 82 in Menton France. The Lewis estate passed to his widow and subsequently to his nephew Donald and great-nephew Colonel Duncan Matheson.

His widow erected a memorial to him in the grounds of Lews Castle He left £1,500 to help pay for the construction of the harbour at

The organisation that Matheson co-founded has evolved into Jardine Matheson Holdings, which still exists today, in 2013 the company was in the top 200 publicly traded companies in the world. Until 1936, principles of staff recruitment, told by Keswick, remained Scottish first, Oxbridge second, while the leadership of the company is Scottish, the firm is international in its dealings. The firm now employs around 390,000 staff with an annual turnover in excess of £35billion.

Pics are Matheson, the family Tomb at Lairg and the cairn was situated in the centre of Bernera in 1992 to commemorate the Bernera Riot of 1874.

#scotland #scottish #history #outer hebrides #China

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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Trade experts often dwell in a separate reality. We discovered this in the quarter-century after the Cold War, when so many trade economists assured us—in one of the great economic misjudgments of modern times—that China and other newly emergent developing nations wouldn’t harm American prosperity or cause serious social and political divisions.

Robert Lighthizer fits this otherworldly description as well, but for different reasons. At a time when nearly every former senior member of Donald Trump’s administration—including his vice president, attorney general, chief of staff, secretary of state, U.N. ambassador, national security advisor(s), and an assortment of once-loyal lawyers appalled by Trump’s Jan. 6 coup attempt—have indicated the 45th president is a danger to the republic and should never be reelected, Lighthizer holds to another set of criteria. Trump, Lighthizer writes in his new book, No Trade Is Free, will go down as “a great president, truly one of the greatest.”

Lighthizer was Trump’s trade representative and was largely responsible for what he describes as a “fundamental shift in American trade policy: a shift that was long overdue and in the interest of all working Americans.” The evidence for this, Lighthizer argues, is that “[i]n the ensuing years, the Biden administration—with a few important exceptions—has continued along the path President Trump and I laid out.”

There is some misrepresentation here—particularly when it comes to U.S. President Joe Biden’s embrace of industrial policy, which Trump mostly ignored. But there is also considerable truth in this statement. Much of the mainstream media is now focused on the ugly horse race underway between Trump as he bids for reelection in 2024 and prosecutors bidding to put him behind bars, or at least take him out of action. But whether or not Trump ever sees the inside of the Oval Office again—as opposed to a prison cell—his most enduring legacy may well lie not in the success of his demagogic insurgency but in trade policy.

Trump turned international trade on its head, administering the final blow to the neoliberal (that is, free trade) consensus of the post-Cold War period and ushering in a new era of neo-protectionism and economic nationalism. And Lighthizer, a professional trade negotiator with experience dating back to the Reagan administration, deserves credit not only for making much of this happen but for building a coalition from within the Republican Party that extends to trade skeptics on the progressive left who now see him as their champion. The leaders of the Democratic Party—starting with Biden—ignore Lighthizer at their peril.

“The thing to understand about Lighthizer is that he’s been a well-informed critic of the mercantilism of other countries for 45 years,” Robert Kuttner, a leading progressive writer on economics, said in a phone interview. “He really knows chapter and verse. Secondly, he’s from the Midwest and is genuinely concerned about workers.” In his book, the Ohio-born Lighthizer makes a point of thanking labor leaders and acknowledging Lori Wallach—perhaps the most respected trade expert in the progressive movement—as “a longtime friend and co-conspirator who was a constant advisor and liaison with many on the [Capitol] Hill.”

Lighthizer delivers a compelling case—which even seminal pro-trade economists like David Ricardo understood—when he argues that fully open trade works to everyone’s benefit only when it is balanced, when participating nations observe the rules, and labor and capital operate together. Trump, he writes, became the first president to fully acknowledge that China manifestly was not doing this. On the contrary, Beijing’s long-term plan was to enrich and empower itself by systemically breaking nearly every promise, adopting mercantilist practices that include largely closed markets, subsidies to state-owned enterprises, industrial espionage, investment controls, currency manipulation, and relentless intellectual property theft.

A classic example, Lighthizer writes, was what happened to Westinghouse, which partnered with China’s largest nuclear state-owned enterprise in the early 2000s and handed over the technology for its state-of-the-art AP1000 plants, only to find itself cut out of the market later. “In one fell swoop, China got the details of decades of U.S. nuclear power research” and stole the rest, he writes. Another U.S company, Magnequench, once had a near-monopoly on magnets that are integral to missile guidance systems, but in 1995 it was purchased by a consortium of an American firm and two Chinese companies, soon afterward moving its production to China. By 2006, it had shut down its last U.S. operation in Valparaiso, Indiana, and moved it to Tianjin. “The jobs and the technology were gone,” Lighthizer writes. So it went with many U.S. technological advances that had “dual-use” potential for military expansion. “It is no exaggeration to say that the biggest navy and the biggest army in the world has been built with U.S. dollars and it is not in America.”

Lighthizer also argues that Trump—contrary to the popular notion that he makes everything up as he goes along for the sole purpose of gratifying his ego and his “America First” base—has been consistent on this point for decades. The former trade representative, who himself became one of the nation’s most prominent skeptics on open trade back during the Reagan administration, says he first grew aware of Trump’s views in 1987, when the then-New York real estate magnate took out a full-page newspaper ad that sounded what later became his favorite foreign-policy grievance as president: how American goodwill is exploited by other nations that enjoy the benefits of the U.S. defense umbrella without paying the costs.

“The world is laughing at American politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies that won’t help,” the ad read. For Trump, the chief beneficiary then was Japan; now it is China. “I believe very strongly in tariffs,” Trump told an interviewer the following year. And when he became president three decades later, he declared in a 2018 tweet: “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.”

In truth they’re not, as subsequent events would bear out. Soon afterward, in a series of moves orchestrated mainly by Lighthizer, Trump imposed steep tariffs on many Chinese goods, as well as tariffs on steel and aluminum from the European Union, Canada, and Mexico, in hopes of gaining market concessions, which didn’t happen. Biden appointed a U.S. trade representative— Katherine Tai—who views overseas trade, especially with China, much as Lighthizer does, and the current president has continued to levy nearly all of the tariffs on some $350 billion in Chinese goods that Trump imposed, even as he has come to a partial understanding with Europe in reducing tariffs. Lighthizer’s other major diplomatic initiative—the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which replaced NAFTA—did manage to improve labor protections somewhat and closed loopholes that allowed companies to evade restrictions on foreign sourcing. (For example, requiring 75 percent of an auto’s parts to be made in one of the three countries, up from the current 62.5 percent.) This, too, won plaudits from progressive Democrats, with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that “there is no question” USMCA is better than NAFTA.

Still, some pundits and economists argue that Trump shouldn’t get too much credit for a broad shift that was likely to happen anyway. His election to the presidency as an insurgent populist in 2016 was more a symptom of the failure of both political parties, Republican and Democratic, to understand how seriously globalized markets and the surge of technological innovation were going to devastate America’s working class. This inevitably created anger and resentment over the crushingly unequal society the United States has become, making the country ripe for populism and nationalism.

How did that happen in the first place? Starting under President Ronald Reagan, Republicans became devout free-traders. After the collapse of the Soviet Union exposed the fallacies of a “command economy,” the Democrats under Bill Clinton also shifted rightward, unleashing capital flows around the world (which disadvantaged labor) and deregulating Wall Street. Most mainstream Democrats became deficit-slashing “Eisenhower Republicans,” in Clinton’s ironic phrase, and bought into trickle-down economics in action if not word, allowing unfair tax policies that favored Wall Street and capital gains earners. Barack Obama mostly followed suit, even after the 2008 financial disaster. Indeed, it’s noteworthy that in a sort of distorted mirror image to Trump’s insurgency, the once-obscure socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders nearly defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primaries on the strength of his own populist agenda.

As Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik told me before Trump’s election, these trends prefigured the current gulf in American politics between the very wealthy and everyone else.

“The sense that we’re all in this together as one nation, a common society and a common policy, has been disrupted by globalization. Now, there is a greater realization that the benefits of globalization accrued disproportionately to the professional classes, the higher skilled, the ones who had the mobility and access to capital,” said Rodrik, who issued one of the earliest warnings about the effect these policies might have on the working class in his 1997 book Has Globalization Gone Too Far?

As a result of these profound changes—and the inability of both political parties to see them until too late, leading to Hillary Clinton’s stunning presidential election loss in 2016—“it seems quite likely that Biden would have embarked on a different trajectory in trade regardless of what preceded him,” Rodrik said in an email last week.

Others agree. “I think that if Trump had stumbled and fallen down the stairs at Trump Tower [when he announced his election bid in 2015] and died, we still would have had a similar elite rethinking of globalism, and the Rust Belt would still have been a swing region open to economic nationalist appeals,” said Michael Lind, a University of Texas political scientist who was also one of the first to see the dangers of untrammeled globalization.

Biden himself had been a pent-up populist long before he entered the White House, as Jared Bernstein, chairman of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, and other advisors told me for an article titled “The Bidenomics Revolution,” published in the early months of the administration. They say the president realized as far back as the opening of China in the 1980s and the fall of the Berlin Wall that millions of new low-wage workers would soon stream into the global market, outpacing even U.S. productivity gains. “He knew that would put U.S. labor on the back foot,” said a former Senate advisor, Jim Greene. Biden was dismayed when the Clinton administration, and then Obama—under whom he served for eight years as vice president—did little to invest in retraining and upgrading America’s workforce. While productivity and GDP surged, middle-class incomes did not, and to make matters worse, the declining middle class took on a greater burden of taxes.

Today, by pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into a new industrial policy intended to benefit blue-collar workers and outpace China, Biden is “enacting a set of core principles that he’s carried with him forever, at a moment that invites precisely that kind of action,” Bernstein told me in 2021.

This was articulated by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in a speech at the Brookings Institution in late April. Sullivan said the administration’s abandonment of “trickle-down” economics in favor of a “foreign policy for the middle class”—code for the neo-protectionism and industrial policy embraced by Biden—was aimed at decades of policies such as “regressive tax cuts, deep cuts to public investment, unchecked corporate concentration, and active measures to undermine the labor movement that initially built the American middle class.” America’s political class, Sullivan said, has awakened to the problems of “oversimplified market efficiency” and its own geopolitical naivete since the Cold War, with “entire supply chains of strategic goods—along with the industries and jobs that made them—moved overseas.”

Even so, Lighthizer is largely correct to say that Trump’s four years in office marked a “fundamental shift” in the U.S. approach to trade and overseas markets. “There’s no question that Trump’s presidency represented a turning point in the Washington consensus on the desirability of unfettered free trade and, more specifically, the economic and geopolitical risks posed by China,” said David Autor, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who was one of the first to document the “China shock.” Although Hillary Clinton began to sense the populist revolt undercutting her candidacy—by opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal she once supported—it’s highly unlikely that she would have imposed steep import tariffs unilaterally as Trump did, or that Biden would have done so on his own.

“Trump’s actions were far more aggressive than we could reasonably have expected of a President Clinton; and the fact that Biden has maintained Trump’s policies indicates that Trump was in part a cause and not just a symptom of our dramatically changed policy stance toward China,” Autor said.

Trump also may have lucked out in picking Lighthizer, who proved to be a rare career pro in the administration at a time when Trump plucked some of his cabinet members out of odd places mainly for what he believed to be their loyalty. Lighthizer knew the weaknesses in the trade system intimately and, for better or worse, proceeded to take it apart—disabling the World Trade Organization (WTO), for example, by refusing to appoint a judge to its appellate court. (Despite promises to restore the WTO, Biden has not done so.)

Three recent historical developments shattered many of Washington’s illusions surrounding neoliberalism. One was the crash of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed. This had the double impact of opening Washington’s eyes to the out-of-control practices on Wall Street and causing a disastrous drop in Americans’ median net worth, according to a 2012 Federal Reserve study. The study found that the net worth of a broad group of Americans loosely defined as the middle class plummeted from a median of $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010. According to University of California at Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, the wealthiest 1 percent of the country actually made out better, in percentage terms, during Obama’s “recovery” than they did from 2002 to 2007 under tax-cutting Republican President George W. Bush. French economist Thomas Piketty has said that the United States is now suffering the worst income inequality in the developed world, even resembling the doomed socioeconomic stratification of the aristocratic “old Europe” in the pre-World War I period.

The second phenomenon was the growing realization by both U.S. political parties that, under autocratic President Xi Jinping, China had no intention of succumbing to a U.S.-dominated international order, and there was little pressure that Washington could apply to alter Beijing’s policies.

The final blow was the global pandemic, which revealed how vulnerable globalized supply chains had become to disruption, triggering severe slowdowns in many sectors as parts and materials grew scarce. “The pandemic supply-side interruptions were enormous, and people realized the overall gains [from the global supply chain] had hidden a lot of downside risks,” said Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Beyond that, he said, “the economic gains from globalization were always exaggerated and the distribution costs [in other words, the effect on the middle class] were underestimated.”

Although Stiglitz—like most economists across the political spectrum—worries about excessive protectionism and the retreat from global cooperation, he suspects that the economic downside will be less than the neoliberal advocates of trade say. “The structure of trade will change, but there will still be a lot of it,” he said in a phone interview.

It’s far too soon to assess the overall economic impact of this shift. But most economists agree that Trump’s tariff-and-tax-cut approach—an odd, ungainly blend of protectionism and trickle-down—did little to fulfill his campaign promise of bringing back manufacturing jobs. The Biden administration has done much better. While some of the surge in new manufacturing investment at home is a result of the post-pandemic recovery, it is also true that Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and CHIPS and Science Act did a lot to bring back what the president’s administration claims are more than 800,000 manufacturing jobs. Trump’s policies fell way short by comparison.

“There is an important difference with Biden,” Rodrik said. “His trade policies are in support of a coherent domestic economic strategy. Trump didn’t have a coherent domestic economic strategy, and his trade policies were scattershot, ad hoc, and ineffective.”

Others disagree somewhat. Lind noted that the Inflation Reduction Act—a dramatically reduced version of Biden’s original “Build Back Better” plan—is largely focused on “green” energy development. “That’s not industrial policy, it’s energy policy, and a stupid energy policy at that,” Lind wrote in an email. “The idea that we can win the global competition to sell windmill rotors and batteries and solar panels against subsidized Chinese competition would make a cow laugh.”

The risk in the long term is that the backlash against open trade will go too far in the other direction. Lighthizer calls for a “strategic decoupling” between the world’s two largest economies, the United States and China, but this is not only economically foolish (and possibly unfeasible), but it will likely result in a long-term deepening of the cold war atmosphere between Beijing and Washington. (Biden, by contrast, is for “de-risking and diversifying, not decoupling,” as Sullivan put it.) Lighthizer certainly exaggerates when he calls China “the greatest threat that the American nation and its system of Western liberal democratic government has faced since the American Revolution.” Even if China is as militaristic, autocratic, and anti-American as he says, it also owes its great wealth and power to the American-orchestrated international system in a way that the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and militarized Japan never did.

What is clear is that Biden, like Lighthizer, is looking to create nothing less than a new world order—or at least a “new Washington consensus,” as Sullivan put it. For now, the new system remains not only inchoate but utterly chaotic. “The international order that emerged after the end of the Second World War and then the Cold War were not built overnight,” said Sullivan. “Neither will this one.” What will success look like? “The world needs an international economic system that works for our wage-earners, works for our industries, works for our climate, works for our national security, and works for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries,” Sullivan said.

That will be a very difficult circle to square—especially since much of the cost to U.S. manufacturing has come from the competition by many of those very countries.

Lighthizer says it more plainly. He writes: “Trade is good. More trade is better. Fair trade is essential. But balanced trade is imperative.”

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newstfionline · 1 year ago

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Wednesday, September 20, 2023

What to Expect When You’re Expecting the U.N. General Assembly (Foreign Policy) As world leaders descend on the United Nations headquarters in New York City, the international body is fighting to maintain its relevance in a world it wasn’t built for when it was established nearly 80 years ago. Global powers are increasingly circumventing the unwieldy U.N. system to conduct multilateral diplomacy, such as through the G-7, G-20, and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) blocs. Eight years ago, the U.N. outlined an ambitious batch of goals to tackle global poverty, gender equality, climate change, and other pressing global issues by 2030. But so far, the world is way off target in meeting those goals. The war in Ukraine has frontally challenged one of the U.N.’s most fundamental purposes, enshrined in its foundational charter, of averting major wars. The Western world’s laser focus on the conflict in Ukraine, meanwhile, has frustrated other countries in the global south as other dire humanitarian catastrophes—conflict in Sudan, coups across Africa, the migration crisis in Central America, and a lot of climate-related disasters—struggle for resources and high-level attention.

Canada’s surging food prices (Reuters) Canada’s plan to bring down food prices by tightening regulation could backfire and fail, raising the cost of doing business in the country without providing relief to consumers, lawyers and economists said. Canada’s weak competition law has been long blamed for allowing a few players to dominate industries ranging from banks to telecoms and groceries. Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to amend the Competition Act to help bring down prices. Trudeau’s move comes as many Canadians reel under an affordability crisis with food prices jumping 25% since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. At the same time, the central bank’s efforts to bring down inflation by raising interest rates to a 22-year-high have pushed up mortgage costs for homeowners and made buying a home unaffordable for others.

U.S. National Debt Tops $33 Trillion for First Time (NYT) America’s gross national debt exceeded $33 trillion for the first time on Monday, providing a stark reminder of the country’s shaky fiscal trajectory at a moment when Washington faces the prospect of a government shutdown this month amid another fight over federal spending. It came as Congress appeared to be faltering in its efforts to fund the government ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline. Unless Congress can pass a dozen appropriations bills or agree to a short-term extension of federal funding at existing levels, the United States will face its first government shutdown since 2019. The debt is on track to top $50 trillion by the end of the decade, as interest on the debt mounts and the cost of the nation’s social safety net programs keeps growing.

Brazil’s Lula pitches his nation—and himself—as fresh leader for Global South (AP) “Brazil is back.” That has been Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s refrain for the better part of the last year, with the president deploying the snappy slogan to cast Brazil—and himself—as a leader of the Global South no longer content to abide the world’s outdated workings. During Lula’s travels, he has pushed for global governance that gives greater heft to the Global South and advocating diminishing the dollar’s dominance in trade. He has made clear that Brazil has no intention of siding with the United States or China, the world’s two largest economies and Brazil’s two biggest trading partners. And he has refused to join Washington and Western Europe in backing Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, instead calling for a club of nations to mediate peace talks. After the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s arrest, Lula said he would review Brazil’s membership in the court.

Germany’s economy struggles (AP) For most of this century, Germany racked up one economic success after another, dominating global markets for high-end products like luxury cars and industrial machinery, selling so much to the rest of the world that half the economy ran on exports. Jobs were plentiful, the government’s financial coffers grew as other European countries drowned in debt, and books were written about what other countries could learn from Germany. No longer. Now, Germany is the world’s worst-performing major developed economy, with both the International Monetary Fund and European Union expecting it to shrink this year. It follows Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the loss of Moscow’s cheap natural gas—an unprecedented shock to Germany’s energy-intensive industries, long the manufacturing powerhouse of Europe. Germany risks “deindustrialization” as high energy costs and government inaction on other chronic problems threaten to send new factories and high-paying jobs elsewhere, said Christian Kullmann, CEO of major German chemical company Evonik Industries AG.

Evidence Suggests Ukrainian Missile Caused Market Tragedy (NYT) The Sept. 6 missile strike on Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine was one of the deadliest in the country in months, killing at least 15 civilians and injuring more than 30 others. The weapon’s payload of metal fragments struck a market, piercing windows and walls and wounding some victims beyond recognition. Less than two hours later, President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russian “terrorists” for the attack, and many media outlets followed suit. Throughout its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly and systematically attacked civilians and struck schools, markets and residences as a deliberate tactic to instill fear in the populace. But evidence collected and analyzed by The New York Times, including missile fragments, satellite imagery, witness accounts and social media posts, strongly suggests the catastrophic strike was the result of an errant Ukrainian air defense missile fired by a Buk launch system. Air defense experts say missiles like the one that hit the market can go off course for a variety of reasons.

In Moscow, the War Is Background Noise, but Ever-Present (NYT) Metro trains are running smoothly in Moscow, as usual, but getting around the city center by car has become more complicated, and annoying, because anti-drone radar interferes with navigation apps. Almost 19 months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Muscovites are experiencing dual realities: The war has faded into background noise, causing few major disruptions, and yet it remains ever-present in their daily lives. There is little anxiety among residents over the drone strikes that have hit Moscow this summer. No alarm sirens to warn of a possible attack. The city continues to grow. Cranes dot the skyline, and there are high-rise buildings going up all over town. But for some, the effects of war are landing harder. Nina, 79, a pensioner who was shopping at an Auchan supermarket in northwestern Moscow, said that she had stopped buying red meat entirely, and that she could almost never afford to buy a whole fish. Nina said that sanctions and ubiquitous construction projects were some reasons for higher prices, but the main reason, she said, was “because a lot is spent on war.”

India, Canada expel diplomats over accusations Delhi killed Sikh separatist (Washington Post) India expelled a Canadian diplomat on Tuesday in a tit-for-tat move after Canadian officials accused Indian government operatives of gunning down a Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in British Columbia and threw out an Indian diplomat they identified as an intelligence officer. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegation of assassination, made during an explosive speech before Parliament on Monday, sent relations between the two nations tumbling toward their lowest point but also held broader ramifications for ties between the U.S.-led alliance and India, which the Biden administration has assiduously courted as a strategic counterweight to China. The Indian government issued a statement Tuesday rejecting Trudeau’s accusation as “absurd and motivated.” India’s Foreign Ministry went on to say that the allegations “seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The inaction of the Canadian Government on this matter has been a long-standing and continuing concern.” (BBC) India has been increasing the pressure on countries with significant Sikh communities, like Canada, Australia and the UK, saying they are failing to tackle what it calls "Sikh extremism." Mr. Nijjar is the third prominent Sikh figure to have died unexpectedly in recent months.

Libya’s flood turmoil (Worldcrunch) Hundreds of protesters rallied in Libya’s Derna on Monday, setting fire to the house of the man who was the city’s mayor at the time of the flood, to demand accountability one week after a flood that killed thousands of residents. Meanwhile, the UN has warned that a disease outbreak could create “a second devastating crisis” as people are falling ill from contaminated water.

Crisis and Bailout: The Tortuous Cycle Stalking Nations in Debt (NYT) Emmanuel Cherry, the chief executive of an association of Ghanaian construction companies, sat in a cafe at the edge of Accra Children’s Park, near the derelict Ferris wheel and kiddie train, as he tallied up how much money government entities owe thousands of contractors. Before interest, he said, the back payments add up to 15 billion cedis, roughly $1.3 billion. “Most of the contractors are home,” Mr. Cherry said. Their workers have been laid off. Like many others in this West African country, the contractors have to wait in line for their money. Teacher trainees complain they are owed two months of back pay. Independent power producers that have warned of major blackouts are owed $1.58 billion. The government is essentially bankrupt. After defaulting on billions of dollars owed to foreign lenders in December, the administration of President Nana Akufo-Addo had no choice but to agree to a $3 billion loan from the lender of last resort, the International Monetary Fund. It was the 17th time Ghana has been compelled to turn to the fund since it gained independence in 1957. The tortuous cycle of crisis and bailout has plagued dozens of poor and middle-income countries throughout Africa, Latin America and Asia for decades.

Many of today’s unhealthy foods were brought to you by Big Tobacco (Washington Post) For decades, tobacco companies hooked people on cigarettes by making their products more addictive. Now, a new study suggests that tobacco companies may have used a similar strategy to hook people on processed foods. In the 1980s, tobacco giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds acquired the major food companies Kraft, General Foods and Nabisco, allowing tobacco firms to dominate America’s food supply and reap billions in sales from popular brands such as Oreo cookies, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Lunchables. By the 2000s, the tobacco giants spun off their food companies and largely exited the food industry—but not before leaving a lasting legacy on the foods that we eat. The new research, published in the journal Addiction, focuses on the rise of “hyper-palatable” foods, which contain potent combinations of fat, sodium, sugar and other additives that can drive people to crave and overeat them. The Addiction study found that in the decades when the tobacco giants owned the world’s leading food companies, the foods that they sold were far more likely to be hyper-palatable than similar foods not owned by tobacco companies. In the past 30 years, hyper-palatable foods have spread rapidly into the food supply, coinciding with a surge in obesity and diet-related diseases. In America, the steepest increase in the prevalence of hyper-palatable foods occurred between 1988 and 2001—the era when Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds owned the world’s leading food companies.

Danish artist told to repay museum €67,000 after turning in blank canvasses (BBC) A Danish artist has been ordered to return nearly 500,000 kroner ($72,000; £58,000) to a museum after giving it two blank canvasses for a project he named Take the Money and Run. The Kunsten Museum in Aalborg had intended for Jens Haaning to embed the banknotes in two pieces of art in 2021. Instead, he gave it blank canvasses and then told Danish media: "The work is that I have taken their money." A court has now ordered him to return the cash, minus 8% for expenses.

#headlines #news

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technologylawyersinvietnam · 2 years ago

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Second Review Of Application Of Anti-Dumping Measures Of Some Aluminum Products from China

On June 10, 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Trade issued Decision No. 1149/QD-BCT on the second review of the application of anti-dumping measures for a number of aluminum products originating from the People’s Republic of China (case code AR02.AR05).

Anti-dumping law firm in Vietnam

The above decision requires a review of the application of anti-dumping measures to certain aluminum, alloy or non-alloy products, in the form of bars, rods and shapes, extruded, whether or not treated surface treatment, whether or not further processed, imported into Vietnam and classified under HS code: 7604.10.10; 7604.10.90, 7604.21.90, 7604.29.10, 7604.29.90.

To ensure the interests of all organizations and individuals involved in the case, the Trade Remedies Authority of Vietnam recommends that relevant organizations and individuals do the followings: register as a related party in the review case to access publicly circulated information during the review process; submit comments, information and evidences related to the content of the review; cooperate with the investigating agency in the investigation and review process.

The conduct of procedures related to the review process must not interfere with the application of anti-dumping measures in force.

If Client needs any more information or request for legal advice or potential dispute regarding trade remedies measures including, anti-dumping, countervailing duty and safeguard measures or international trade dispute matters, our international trade lawyers, countervailing duty lawyers in Vietnam and antitrust lawyers in Vietnam at ANT Lawyers could be of help.

#Anti-dumping case AR02 #anti-dumping law firm in Vietnam

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ejesgistnews · 4 months ago

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Tinubu’s Lawyer Rotimi Oguneso Earned $170,000 as Member of Arbitration Panel Awarding $70 Million Against Nigeria. Rotimi Oguneso, a senior Nigerian lawyer who defended Bola Tinubu during the 2023 presidential election petitions tribunal, has come under scrutiny for earning $170,000 as a member of a three-man arbitration panel that awarded $70 million against Nigeria. Read Also : Anyone Applying To Go To University In Nigeria From Next Year Will Have To Meet The Required Age Of 18 – Education Minister, Tahir Mamman The panel was convened to resolve a dispute stemming from a botched free trade zone deal between Ogun State and Zhongshan Fucheng Industrial Investment Ltd. Oguneso, nominated by Nigeria to represent its interests on the panel, worked alongside Matthew Gearing, a UK legal practitioner chosen by Zhongshan, and David Neuberger, former president of the UK Supreme Court, who chaired the arbitration. Pay Attention To: Transfer: West Ham To Sign Ex-Chelsea Striker As O’Shea Joins EPL Club Ipswich The panel operated between early 2020 and March 26, 2021, when the final verdict was issued. The dispute revolved around allegations by Zhongshan that Ogun State had violated a 2001 trade treaty between Nigeria and China by rescinding rights to a free trade zone in 2016. The arbitration concluded with Nigeria being ordered to pay $55,675,000 plus $9,400,000 in interest, alongside £2,864,445 in costs. Nigeria was further required to refund Zhongshan for the costs of the arbitration panel, which amounted to £549,655. The panel’s decision, in which Oguneso concurred, has sparked concerns that the case against Nigeria was stronger than previously acknowledged by the country's officials. Despite efforts by Nigerian federal and Ogun State officials to downplay the arbitration's impact, the judgement has already led to the seizure of Nigerian assets abroad, including guest houses in the UK and private jets in France and Canada. How NIA DG, Rufai Abubakar, Who Failed Promotion Exams Three Times, Was Forced to Resign from Tinubu's Govt Nigeria has denied any wrongdoing and is reportedly working to resolve the matter with the Chinese firm. However, the arbitration's outcome has raised significant questions about Nigeria's handling of international trade agreements and its legal defenses in global arbitration disputes. 12 Things to Know About the New CJN Kekere-Ekun, Blocked from the U.S. for Judicial Corruption Credit: Peoples gazette

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sunnyworldwidelogistics · 6 months ago

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Are the various pitfalls of "losing a bill of lading, going to court, and delaying shipments" a greater or lesser test for a freight forwarder China?

Having been in international logistics for over 25 years, I've encountered almost every pitfall in the logistics field. It's precisely because we've encountered so many pitfalls that we have more industry experience than other freight forwarder China companies. Besides me, there's another key figure, Mr. Liu, whose story I'll share today.

Mr. Liu is in charge of delivery, so he has many firsthand logistics stories. In the freight forwarder China industry, countless nights and challenges have shaped Mr. Liu into a resilient figure.

I still vividly remember an incident from over a decade ago when we lost a bill of lading. One of our long-term clients from Lufeng trusted us because of our diligent work ethic as a freight forwarder China company, leading to years of cooperation. However, in one shipment, the bill of lading was lost in transit to the overseas client! The bill of lading is proof of ownership. Although the goods arrived at the port, the client couldn't prove ownership, which not only delayed the delivery but also risked the goods being claimed by someone else. This was a huge issue for all parties involved and was a first for our company, which had been in the freight forwarder China business for over a decade.

The client was very anxious, and we were also at a loss since it was our first encounter with such a situation. According to regulations, if a bill of lading is lost, a security deposit equivalent to the cargo value must be paid to the shipping company and held for three years. The deposit is only returned if no one else claims the goods during that period.

Mr. Liu had to step in to resolve the issue. As the go-to person in the freight forwarder China industry, he always has a solution. He first contacted the Lufeng client and the overseas client, personally explaining the situation to both parties to prevent panic. Then he contacted the shipping company, clarified the details, and after discussions, signed a guarantee agreement. Eventually, the goods were released in time, and the issue was resolved.

Another incident happened the year before last. As an established company in the freight forwarder China industry, we've encountered all kinds of situations. Sunny Worldwide Freight Forwarder China, with standardized warehouses at sea terminals, has signed contracts with three major international shipping companies and serves as vice president of 13 freight forwarding associations, showcasing our strong position in the foreign trade logistics industry. Hence, we have numerous clients. At the time, a client from Fujian had used our sea and air freight services, always paying freight on time. I felt our cooperation was smooth, so for one air freight shipment, I arranged the delivery without receiving the freight payment upfront. Unexpectedly, the client delayed payment indefinitely, citing financial difficulties, putting immense pressure on our sales staff as they were constantly urged by the finance and management teams. Emails to the client went unanswered.

The client later claimed the American client would pay the freight. We contacted the American client, explaining we were the freight forwarder China for the Fujian client, but the response was that the booking was between us and the shipper, not their responsibility. This stalemate lasted for half a year until we had to resort to legal action. As many know, this is a very complicated and tedious process. Mr. Liu personally managed it, finding a lawyer, preparing evidence, communicating with the client, and following up throughout the process. After a year of Mr. Liu's relentless efforts, we won the case, and the opposing party paid the freight. This incident is well-known among Shenzhen's freight forwarder China circles.

In our early days of exhibition logistics, being a new freight forwarder China in this area, we sometimes mishandled details, causing delays in customs clearance and delivery to clients. Clients were understandably furious. Smoothly handling these details to ensure a seamless process was urgent. Again, Mr. Liu personally managed each step, ensuring everything was smooth before handing it over to the sales team.

Mr. Liu is the stabilizing force for our freight forwarder China business, giving everyone peace of mind as long as he's around.

As a freight forwarder China company with 25 years of experience, we care more about our clients' needs than they do. Barring natural disasters, our punctuality rate is 99%. If you have international shipping needs, please contact us at [email protected]. We're confident you'll be satisfied.

#freight forwarder china

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sunaleisocial · 6 months ago

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The rules of the game

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/the-rules-of-the-game/

The rules of the game

At the core of Raymond Wang’s work lies a seemingly simple question: Can’t we just get along?

Wang, a fifth-year political science graduate student, is a native of Hong Kong who witnessed firsthand the shakeup and conflict engendered by China’s takeover of the former British colony. “That type of experience makes you wonder why things are so complicated,” he says. “Why is it so hard to live with your neighbors?”

Today, Wang is focused on ways of managing a rapidly intensifying U.S.-China competition, and more broadly, on identifying how China — and other emerging global powers — bend, break, or creatively accommodate international rules in trade, finance, maritime, and arms control matters to achieve their ends.

The current game for global dominance between the United States and China continually threatens to erupt into dangerous confrontation. Wang’s research aims to construct a more nuanced take on China’s behaviors in this game.

“U.S. policy towards China should be informed by a better understanding of China’s behaviors if we are to avoid the worst-case scenario,” Wang believes.

“Selective and smart”

One of Wang’s major research thrusts is the ongoing trade war between the two nations. “The U.S. views China as rewriting the rules, creating an alternative world order — and accuses China of violating World Trade Organization (WTO) rules,” says Wang. “But in fact, China has been very selective and smart about responding to these rules.”

One critical, and controversial, WTO matter involves determining whether state-owned enterprises are, in the arcane vocabulary of the group, “public bodies,” which are subject to sometimes punitive WTO rules. The United States asserts that if a government owns 51 percent of a company, it is a public body. This means that many essential Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) — manufacturers of electric vehicles, steel, or chemicals, for example — would fall under WTO provisions, and potentially face punitive discipline.

But China isn’t the only nation with SOEs. Many European countries, including stalwart U.S. partners France and Norway, subsidize companies that qualify as public bodies according to the U.S. definition. They, too, could be subject to tough WTO regulations.

“This could harm a swathe of the E.U. economy,” says Wang. “So China intelligently made the case to the international community that the U.S. position is extreme, and has pushed for a more favorable interpretation through litigation at the WTO.”

For Wang, this example highlights a key insight of his research: “Rising powers such as China exhibit cautious opportunism,” he says. “China will try to work with the existing rules as much as possible, including bending them in creative ways.”

But when it comes down to it, Wang argues, China would rather avoid the costs of building something completely new.

“If you can repurpose an old tool, why would you buy a new one?” he asks. “The vast majority of actions China is taking involves reshaping the existing order, not introducing new rules or blowing up institutions and building new ones.”

Interviewing key players

To bolster his theory of “cautious opportunism,” Wang’s doctoral project sets out a suite of rule-shaping strategies adopted by rising powers in international organizations. His analysis is driven by case studies of disputes recently concluded, or ongoing, in the WTO, the World Bank, and other bodies responsible for defining and policing rules that govern all manner of international relations and commerce.

Gathering evidence for his argument, Wang has been interviewing people critical to the disputes on all sides.

“My approach is to figure out who was in the room when certain decisions were made and talk to every single person there,” he says. “For the WTO and World Bank, I’ve interviewed close to 50 relevant personnel, including front-line lawyers, senior leadership, and former government officials.” These interviews took place in Geneva, Singapore, Tokyo, and Washington.

But writing about disputes that involve China poses a unique set of problems. “It’s difficult to talk to actively serving Chinese officials, and in general, nobody wants to go on the record because all the content is sensitive.”

As Wang moves on to cases in maritime governance, he will be reaching out to the key players involved in managing sensitive conflicts in the South China Sea, an Indo-Pacific region dotted with shoals and offering desirable fisheries as well as oil and gas resources.

Even here, Wang suggests, China may find reason to be cautious rather than opportunistic, preferring to carve out exemptions for itself or shift interpretations, rather than overturning the existing rules wholesale.

Indeed, Wang believes China and other rising powers introduce new rules only when conditions open up a window of opportunity: “It may be worth doing so when using traditional tools doesn’t get you what you want, if your competitors are unable or unwilling to counter mobilize against you, and you see that the costs of establishing these new rules are worth it,” he says.

Beyond Wang’s dissertation, he has also been part of a research team led by M. Taylor Fravel, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science, that has published papers on China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

From friends to enemies

Wang left Hong Kong and its political ferment behind at age 15, but the challenge of dealing with a powerful neighbor and the potential crisis it represented stayed with him. In Italy, he attended a United World College — part of a network of schools bringing together young people from different nations and cultures for the purpose of training leaders and peacemakers.

“It’s a utopian idea, where you force teenagers from all around the world to live and study together and get along for two years,” says Wang. “There were people from countries in the Balkans that were actively at war with each other, who grew up with the memory of air raid sirens and family members who fought each other, but these kids would just hang out together.”

Coexistence was possible on the individual level, Wang realized, but he wondered, “What systemic thing happens that makes people do messed-up stuff to each other when they are in a group?”

With this question in mind, he went to the University of St. Andrews for his undergraduate and master’s degrees in international relations and modern history. As China continued its economic and military march onto the world stage, and Iran generated international tensions over its nuclear ambitions, Wang became interested in nuclear disarmament. He drilled down into the subject at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, where he earned a second master’s degree in nonproliferation and terrorism studies.

Leaning into a career revolving around policy, he applied to MIT’s security studies doctoral program, hoping to focus on the impact of emerging technologies on strategic nuclear stability. But events in the world led him to pivot. “When I started in the fall of 2019, the U.S.-China relationship was going off the rails with the trade war,” he says. “It was clear that managing the relationship would be one of the biggest foreign policy challenges for the foreseeable future, and I wanted to do research that would help ensure that the relationship wouldn’t tip into a nuclear war.”

Cooling tensions

Wang has no illusions about the difficulty of containing tensions between a superpower eager to assert its role in the world order, and one determined to hold onto its primacy. His goal is to make the competition more transparent, and if possible, less overtly threatening. He is preparing a paper, “Guns and Butter: Measuring Spillover and Implications for Technological Competition,” that outlines the different paths taken by the United States and China in developing defense-related technology that also benefits the civilian economy.

As he wades into the final phase of his thesis and contemplates his next steps, Wang hopes that his research insights might inform policymakers, especially in the United States, in their approach to China. While there is a fiercely competitive relationship, “there is still room for diplomacy,” he believes. “If you accept my theory that a rising power will try and use, or even abuse, existing rules as much as possible, then you need non-military — State Department — boots on the ground to monitor what is going on at all the international institutions,” he says. The more information and understanding the United States has of China’s behavior, the more likely it will be able “to cool down some of the tensions,” says Wang. “We need to develop a strategic empathy.”

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shanghaiganuslawfirm · 19 days ago

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Shipping Lawyers In China– Go To The Absolute Best

Given that china has been ranked among the giant traders of the world, its shipping industry plays a significant role in trading around the world. Given the port congestion and a vast network of shipping, legal factors in this operations area are complex.

A number of Shipping Lawyers in China are able to give invaluable technical assistance to clients involved in a number of jurisdictions and a variety of maritime laws. These legal practitioners work on a broad range of services; consultation in charter party contracts, cargo issues and claims, bills of lading claims as well as ship financing and construction act. They are valuable for shipowners, shipping companies, logistics firms and even multinationals in maritime trade.

Current Shipping Law Firms in China are adept with both the domestic maritime laws and the international which is essential for the shipping business. That way, cross-border disputes will be handled well and the clients of the firms will receive a comprehensive legal solution to their multijurisdictional problems. Also, the services involve compliance with IMO regulations; thus, guarding the client against fines from the organization.

An equally important service offering by Shipping Lawyers in China includes acting for clients in marine arbitration and litigation matters. Today, different lawyers dealing with shipping issues in China try to get the best result for their clients in the most efficient and quick manner by working with arbitration centers and courts.

This concept is effective for promoting effective conflict resolution hence reducing operational interferences which may inconvenience clients and result in significant losses to them.

The purpose of selecting the experienced Shipping Law Firms in China, whether located in Shanghai, Beijing, or Guangzhou is logical. Clients are provided with practical advice based on their extensive expertise in maritime law and impressive advocacy for their interests that empowers them and prevents them from bureaucracy when competing in the international market. Especially for those companies engaged in international trade, it is a wise choice to seek support from top Shipping Lawyers in China so as to ensure sound legal shields.

#arbitration law firms in china #international law firms in china #investment law firms in china #lawyers in china #law firms in china

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jcmarchi · 6 months ago

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The rules of the game

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-rules-of-the-game/

The rules of the game

At the core of Raymond Wang’s work lies a seemingly simple question: Can’t we just get along?

“U.S. policy towards China should be informed by a better understanding of China’s behaviors if we are to avoid the worst-case scenario,” Wang believes.

“Selective and smart”

But when it comes down to it, Wang argues, China would rather avoid the costs of building something completely new.

Interviewing key players

Gathering evidence for his argument, Wang has been interviewing people critical to the disputes on all sides.

From friends to enemies

Coexistence was possible on the individual level, Wang realized, but he wondered, “What systemic thing happens that makes people do messed-up stuff to each other when they are in a group?”

Cooling tensions

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head-post · 4 months ago

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Commission “very confident” in China’s tariff case as it could violate WTO rules

The European Commission defended the legality of its trade duties on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) as several legal experts argued it might have breached World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules in its anti-dumping investigation.

Following China’s decision earlier this month to file a formal complaint with the WTO over the EU’s provisional duties, legal analysts argued that the sheer complexity of the case meant that the Commission might have breached WTO rules during its nine-month investigation. Victor Crochet, senior associate at Van Bael & Bellis, told Euractiv:

[There is] an almost 100% chance that the Commission violated some WTO rules. When you bring a WTO case against another country, you rarely win, or you lose entirely. The probable result of the case is not a withdrawal of the measures altogether, but a reduction in the level of the duties.

However, European Commission spokesman Olof Gill said the EU leadership was “very confident that every aspect of its investigation has been fully in line with all relevant WTO and EU rules.” He also pointed to Tuesday’s downward revision of EU tariffs as “show[ing] that the Commission fully respects all relevant rules and obligations and bases its findings strictly on facts and evidence.”

Reduced tariffs

The EU provisional tariffs now stand at 36.3 per cent, down from 38.1 per cent that the Commission originally outlined in June. A ruling in favour of China could send a signal that the global trading system still offered emerging economies like China ” means to challenge the actions of more established powers,” international and EU trade and sanctions lawyer Evangelia Anevlavi stated.

If the EU did indeed fail to provide China with all necessary information or did not properly justify its determinations, this could constitute a serious breach of its WTO obligations.

Meanwhile, trade experts noted that China’s complaint to the WTO concerned only the EU’s provisional tariffs, not the final ones, which were expected to be imposed at the end of October. In other words, Beijing will have to file a second formal complaint if no negotiated agreement is reached.

To prevent the duties from becoming permanent, 15 EU countries representing at least 65 per cent of the bloc’s population must vote in favour of blocking the duties. However, only four member states voted against the tariffs in an advisory vote in July.