Vietnam
on Track to Join WTO Before End of 2006
Fed
Official says Poole says China's Growth is Good for U.S.
China
Looks at Possible New Steps to Cool Off Economy
Vietnam
on Track to Join WTO Before End of 2006
A WTO official said last week that Vietnam looks to be on track
to meet its goal of joining the WTO before the end of this year.
Eirik Glenne of Norway, who chairs both the working party on
Vietnam's accession and the WTO General Council, said that with
Vietnam's market access negotiations with the U.S. completed
in May, work in Geneva is now focusing on translating the various
bilateral deals Vietnam negotiated into the lengthy detailed
commitments it will apply to trade with the entire WTO membership.
"My
target remains to try to conclude the mandate of this working
party in time for the General Council to consider Vietnam's
accession when it meets in October," Glenne said. Delegations
in the working party of over 40 WTO members said they support
Vietnam's aspiration to join the WTO by the time Hanoi hosts
the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in November,
and they applauded the effort Vietnam has put into passing laws,
issuing rules and regulations, and conceding to many of their
demands.
Glenne
has asked members to discuss revisions to the draft texts with
Vietnam and to supply these in writing to the WTO Secretariat
within the next few weeks. He aims to circulate the entire draft
accession package as early as possible in September. This would
include both the schedules of commitments on tariffs, tariff
quotas, agricultural subsidies and services market opening as
well as the working party report describing actions Vietnam
has taken or will take.
By
mid-September, Glenne plans to start informal consultations
to fine tune the drafts. "As soon as I am satisfied with
this phase of our work, we can go into a final meeting of the
working party to conclude our mandate," he said. The package
would then go to the General Council for a decision. Once its
membership has been approved Vietnam has to ratify the deal,
with another 30 days after ratification before it becomes a
full member.
World
Trade\Interactive
top
Fed
official says Poole says China's growth is good for U.S.
A
rising China will lift economic boats in the United States --
especially when Beijing can be persuaded to stop manipulating
its currency and counterfeiting American products, the president
of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis told a legislative
group meeting in Louisville yesterday. William Poole said there
will be short-term challenges, however, as a glut of cheap labor
from China, India and other emerging nations depresses the wages
of low-skilled U.S. workers.
Poole
addressed the Southern Legislative Conference at the Marriott
Louisville Downtown. The event attracted lawmakers and staffs
from 16 states. Poole said many states, especially in the South,
have seen dramatic gains in exports to China, helping to create
jobs. Kentucky's exports to China have soared from $64 million
in 2000 to $400 million in 2005, with chemicals, metals and
machinery leading the way.
"Put simply, a wealthier China is a better market for U.S.
goods and services," Poole said. "Especially for the
high-tech and agricultural goods which the United States produces
in abundance." Poole said protectionist policies to defend
U.S. wages would not create jobs and would deprive consumers
of inexpensive Chinese products.
A wealthier China will bolster U.S. exports, he said, and low-skilled
American workers should be retrained to take advantage of that
demand. "They can increase their compensation and employment
prospects, which will allow them to adjust to the evolving economic
environment," Poole said.
For
the U.S.-China relationship to mature, Poole said, the two sides
must continue to negotiate away hindrances to the sale of goods
to China, such as theft of intellectual property, restrictions
to the distribution of foreign products and the lack of transparent
regulations. China has pegged its currency, the yuan, to the
U.S. dollar and, beginning last year, to a basket of currencies
in which the yuan is allowed to narrowly fluctuate. China's
policies have been criticized as undervaluing the yuan at the
dollar's expense, contributing among other things to an erosion
of U.S. manufacturing jobs and a mounting trade deficit. But
Poole said he believed "in due time, it will be in the
interest of China to relax that peg, or to move toward a more
market-determined rate" for the yuan. He said China has
pursued its policy to promote monetary stability. "China
has a banking system that is deeply underwater with a lot of
loans to state enterprises. China has some issues internally
that make this policy desirable."
He
sees the policy changing, Poole said, but "when it will
change, I have no idea."
Poole, who isn't a voter on the Federal Open Market Committee,
told reporters after the speech that he is "still very
much in the 50-50 camp" on whether the panel will continue
raising interest rates at its meeting next Tuesday. Market expectations
for a rate hike have been ratcheted downwards, particularly
in the wake of last week's weaker-than-expected economic growth
data for the second quarter and the Fed's own regional Beige
Book survey. Still, inflationary pressures remain, Poole said.
"Data that have come in relevant to assessing inflation
pressures have tended to tilt in the direction of greater pressures
than we had previously thought," he told reporters.
The
Courier-Journal
top
China
Looks at Possible New Steps to Cool Off Economy
Officials
are examining new steps to cool off China's sizzling economy
as its top planning agency called for tighter bank credit and
curbs on construction, state media reported. The reports today
suggested Beijing believes earlier measures, including an interest
rate rise in April, are failing to contain runaway growth in
spending on factories and other assets that Chinese leaders
worry could ignite a financial crisis. More than 100 economic
officials were at the five-day meeting that began Tuesday in
the seaside resort of Beidaihe, the Xinhua News Agency and newspapers
reported.
The
officials were looking at "how to slow down economic growth
when some economists say it is already overheating," improve
energy efficiency and narrow a growing gap between rich and
poor, the reports said. They didn't identify any of the participants
or say what possible measures they were considering. A report
by the Cabinet's National Development and Reform Commission
called for "stricter controls on the number of new projects,
more stringent land management (and) tighter bank lending,"
according to Xinhua. China's economic growth surged to 11.3
percent in the second quarter, driven by fixed-asset investment
that rose by 29.8 percent during the first six months, according
to the government.
Investment
in some industries grew even faster, reaching 44.5 percent in
auto manufacturing and 40.6 percent in textiles, according to
the NDRC report issued Tuesday. It blamed "local governments'
blind pursuit of rapid economic development, excessively driven
by growth in fixed assets investment," the China Daily
newspaper said. "Rampant illegal land use exacerbated the
problem."
President Hu Jintao's government wants rapid growth to spread
prosperity to the hundreds of millions of people who have been
left behind by China's economic boom. But Chinese leaders worry
that runaway spending on factories, luxury apartments and other
unneeded new assets could ignite inflation or leave companies
and banks with dangerously high debt.
The
Herald-Leader
