WASHINGTON (AFP) — President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke by phone Wednesday, days after the U.S. leader met over the weekend with the president of China, the White House said in a statement. The two leaders “discussed the president’s recent meetings with President Xi Jinping of China, and agreed on the importance of ensuring stability and pursuing dialogue as it relates to the East China Sea,” the statement read.

TWO AMERICAN wheat associations are encouraging the Philippines, Indonesia, and Japan to enter into a multilateral trade agreement for easier access to markets in the region.

PALM SPRINGS, Calif.--Chinese President Xi Jinping asked U.S. President Barack Obama to keep Beijing in the loop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade arrangement during a summit on June 8, but did not signal China's interest in joining the talks. China appears to be alarmed by the U.S.-led initiative, which would establish free trade rules governing a large part of the Asia-Pacific region without its participation. Xi and Obama discussed the TPP “a bit,” national security adviser Tom Donilon told reporters on June 8.

The World Trade Organization body responsible for making Kazakhstan a member has been urged to speed up the accession process to ensure that it is completed by December 2013. WTO director general Pascal Lamy told reporters on June 6, 2013 that "Kazakhstan is at an advanced stage of its accession negotiation. My guess is that this could be doable this year."

(Reuters) - The European Union plans to lodge a complaint with the World Trade Organization against Chinese duties on steel tubes used in power plants, EU sources said on Tuesday, opening another front in a rapidly escalating trade conflict with Beijing.

Ministers representing the New Zealand and Chinese governments have held talks focusing on how their Free Trade Agreement (FTA) can be supported. Chinese Customs Vice Minister Lu Bin met with his New Zealand counterpart Maurice Williamson to discuss their joint aims of making trade and compliance easier, and of doubling bilateral trade levels by 2015. They also noted the work currently underway to "explore solutions that will benefit traders as well as the two customs administrations," Williamson explained.

The U.S. economy may have undergone a sea change in the past quarter-century — with workers’ incomes shrinking while major shareholders’ incomes soar — but the drive among our corporations and government for more free-trade agreements plows relentlessly ahead. The Obama administration, like those of Bill Clinton and both Presidents Bush, is seeking a trade deal, this one with Pacific Rim nations. What’s in the pact isn’t clear, as the administration has clamped a tight lid on the proceedings.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s four-day visit to Tokyo last week produced significant advancement in bilateral ties and was welcomed in both countries. The consequent, rather long 34-paragraph joint statement contained no surprises or ground-breaking announcements beyond what was reported in the media prior to the trip. Instead, it reaffirmed and reinforced the two countries’ ‘global and strategic partnership’ and set some new initiatives and goals for the near future.

What's the Alianza del Pacifico? Narrowly speaking, it's the governments of those Latin American countries that are part of the US-sponsored process aimed at creating a Trans-Pacific Alliance (TPP). They include Mexico, Colombia, Peru and, for the moment, Chile. The term is also more generally used to describe all of the countries involved in the negotiations for a TPP.

OTTAWA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Canada released on Friday a lengthy list of food products imported from the United States in a bid to target a possible retaliation against its Southern neighbor over Washington's new regulations under its Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) law requiring retailers to identify the source of livestock.