10/7/2012 - The United States and its eight TPP partners made important progress at the 13th Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiating round that concluded today. The talks, which were held July 2-10, continued the march forward toward conclusion of the more than 20 chapters under negotiation between the United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

HA NOI — The Viet Nam Sugar and Sugarcane Association (VSSA) has called on the Government to scrap its system of setting individual sugar import quotas for food processing enterprises. Nguyen Hai, chairman of the association, said the Government should import a certain amount of sugar and then invite bids to balance supply and demand. Businesses which offered the best prices would be the winning tenders. Hai said the mechanism would create transparency while ensuring enterprises' demands for sugar are met.

As part of the European Commission’s developing negotiations towards trade treaties with the individual ten countries within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Philippines has begun a study into a possible free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU). The recent signing of a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and the Philippines, the text of which had been completed in mid-2010, has been seen as the forerunner of FTA discussions.

Wind towers from China and Vietnam are about to get more expensive. Utility-scale wind towers from China will face anti-dumping duties from 20.85 percent to 72.69 percent, the Commerce Department said Friday. Towers from Vietnam face anti-dumping duties between 52.67 percent and 59.91 percent. The anti-dumping tariff, designed to counteract nations selling goods in the U.S. at below-market rates to snatch up more market share, adds to countervailing duties of between 13.74 percent and 26 percent, the department announced in May.

There hasn’t been much to cheer about in global trade these last few years.

Korea and Turkey are scheduled to ink a bilateral free trade agreement and an agreement on trade in goods on Wednesday in Ankara, Seoul’s Trade Ministry said on Monday. Trade Minister Bark Tae-ho and Turkish Minister of Economy Zafer Caglayan will sign the trade pact, which will be the ninth FTA to be signed by Korea. Turkey will be the 46th country to sign an FTA with Korea. The two countries had announced in March that they concluded the FTA negotiations, which began in March 2010.

GENEVA, July 30 (Reuters) - Indonesia went to the World Trade Organization on Monday to overturn anti-dumping duties imposed by the European Union in its first such complaint against the bloc since winning a WTO court challenge against the United States. Indonesia wants to overturn EU anti-dumping duties on imports of Indonesian fatty alcohols, which are used in the chemicals industry, the WTO said. Such duties are imposed when a country thinks imports are priced at an unfair discount.

MOSCOW, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Trade volume between Russia and Vietnam would rise by 1 billion U.S. dollars to 4 billion dollars in 2012, said Russian economist Elvira Nabiullina Monday. While addressing a Russia-Vietnam business conference in Moscow, Nabiullina, who was appointed as President Vladimir Putin's economic advisor in May, said bilateral trade turnover between the two countries has risen three-fold since 2006.

After expressing their wish to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in November last year, Canada, Japan and Mexico conducted extensive behind-the-scenes lobbying for the favored invitations to be included in the current negotiations for this expanding Asia-Pacific free-trade pact. The TPP is a regional agreement aimed at achieving liberalizing trade relations between pact members, as well as agreement on other common regulatory issues.