(Reuters) - U.S. steel producers on Thursday accused Russia of flooding the market with cheap flat-rolled steel, challenging a 15-year trade deal and potentially reigniting a decades-old dispute over imports amid heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow.

(Reuters) - South Korea has no choice but to scrap caps on rice imports from the start of 2015, instead managing shipments into the country using a system of tariffs, a senior government official said on Friday. Such a shift has long been expected as a 20-year-old agreement over rice import quotas with the World Trade Organisation expires at the end of 2014, with the nation under pressure to take greater steps to open its markets for the staple grain.

The European Commission (EC) has decided to initiate a probe to look into the factual grounds for a potential extension of duties introduced in 2009 on biodiesel imports originating in the United States, a source told Xinhua on Thursday. The investigation is initiated at the request of the European Biodiesel Board (EBB), which, representing the major biofuels producing industry in the European Union, has asked for a renewal of the anti-dumping and countervailing duties imposed on U.S. biodiesel in 2009, according to the source close to the matter.

The largest trade unions in the US and EU are calling for protections for online privacy and the dropping of special protections for foreign investors as part of a long series of demands to secure their backing for a transatlantic trade pact. The conditions set by the AFL-CIO, the US’s largest union, and the European Trade Union Confederation are due to be unveiled on Thursday and amount to a serious blow to efforts to sell the benefits of what would be the largest bilateral trade deal ever struck.

New Zealand and Canada are to cut their import tariffs on a number of environmental goods as part of a multilateral trade pact being negotiated at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The negotiations were launched on July 8, 2014, by a group of members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

The China government has imposed anti-dumping and anti-subsidization tariffs on solar-grade polysilicon imported from the US, Europe and South Korea, but much of the US-produced polysilicon has been imported through export processing zones (EPZs) to evade such taxation and therefore China-based polysilicon makers have urged the China government to include polysilicon imported via EPZs in the scope of punitive taxation, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

HA NOI (VNS) – The US Department of Commerce (DOC) has announced the preliminary findings on its administrative review for anti-dumping duties on tra fish fillets imported from Viet Nam.

The ANZUS Treaty was signed 63 years ago by Australia, New Zealand and the United States, in part as a counter to the US security treaty with Japan and the final peace agreement following the end of World War II. ANZUS then was intended to stand against any possible resurgence of Japanese military power in the Asia Pacific region.

The International Trade Administration Commission has opened up an investigation into the dumping of poultry products into South Africa.  “The investigation came about as a result of an application by the South African Poultry Association that had alleged various dumping from the UK, Netherlands and Germany,” Siyabulela Tsengiwe, chief commissioner of the International Trade Administration Commission (Itac), told CNBC Africa.

SINGAPORE — The process to finalise and implement the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Singapore and the European Union (EU) will not be affected by the European Parliament elections in May that saw a larger number seats won by Eurosceptic parties. As the majority of the European Parliament is still formed by the central conservatives and liberals, the administration is very unlikely to block the FTA, said European Union Ambassador to Singapore Dr Michael Pulch today (July 9).