New Zealand and South Korea completed a seventh round of talks on their proposed free trade agreement (FTA), but reported on June 13, 2014, after six days of meetings in Auckland, that they had made little progress on agreeing further tariff reductions. While the two countries were said to have made significant progress on other areas, such as chapters on services and investment, the elimination of tariffs on agricultural products remains a sticking point, particularly for South Korea.

Japanese trade officials are rushing to clear the hurdles to a Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade pact. They are accelerating talks with individual countries ahead of a meeting of all 12 next month. Chief negotiators for the TPP will gather in Vancouver, Canada, in July for about 10 days. Ministers from each country agreed last month to speed up talks for a final deal. Officials from Japan and New Zealand met this week. They discussed tariffs on key agricultural products, including beef.

The government has initiated an investigation on imports of hot-rolled coils (HRC), chequered coils and pickled and oiled (P&O) coils from China, Indonesia and Korea upon receiving a petition for the imposition of anti-dumping duty from a domestic producer on May 20, 2014.

(Reuters) - The U.S. steel industry is considering challenging a trade deal with Russia that governs imports of hot-rolled steel, potentially reviving a decades-old dispute amid mounting tensions over Russia's actions in Ukraine, two sources said. A so-called suspension agreement struck after the Cold War has sheltered Russian steelmakers from steep anti-dumping duties on hot-rolled coil, instead setting a cap on HRC imports and a minimum price that many in the U.S. industry believe is too low even after a 2012 revision.

(Reuters) - The outline of an international trade deal opening up services markets is in place, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said on Wednesday, ahead of the next round of negotiations next week. The Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), which seeks to free up trade in services such as communications and banking, is being negotiated among 50 countries that make up nearly two-thirds of global services trade.

Washington, June 18 (CNA) The United States has confirmed for the first time that Taiwan has begun the process of consultations to join the Tran-Pacific Partnership, a U.S.-initiated regional trade bloc. In a Monday speech at Washington think tank the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said that economically, TPP would bind together a group that represents 40 percent of global GDP, and about a third of world trade.

BRUSSELS, June 18 (Xinhua ) -- The European Commission will host a sixth round of EU-US talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, in Brussels from July 14 to July 18, 2014. According to an official EU statement, during this round of trade talks, negotiators will continue their discussions on issues such as trade in goods and services, regulatory issues, government procurement, environmental protection and labor rights, energy and raw materials, and opportunities for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

(Reuters) - Members of the Group of 20 leading economies are still doing more to restrict trade than to liberalise it, according to a report published by major world agencies on Wednesday. The regular monitoring report, from the World Trade Organization, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the U.N. agency UNCTAD, said the G20 countries had put in place 112 new trade restrictions in the six months to mid-May.

Colombia’s Congress on Tuesday voted against a signed free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea following disappointing results of a similar deal with the United States. Congress of Colombia voted against the free trade agreement, which did not make it past the third debate in the House of Representatives, as it was decided to further study some of the more controversial clauses including one which affected the automobile industry, which would have been one of the hardest hit by the trade agreement, reported El Universal.

LUXEMBOURG — Negotiations to bring Russia's giant South Stream project into line with European Union law are pointless as long as Moscow is asking the World Trade Organization to review the bloc's energy rules, Europe's energy chief said. Russia's Gazprom plans to build a giant pipeline named South Stream on the bed of the Black Sea to Bulgaria and then to Austria to ship gas directly to the EU, bypassing Ukraine, through which a large part of EU gas supplies currently travels.