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Coated paper?
By PrinceGaz on 4/11/2007 2:56:47 PM , Rating: 2
President Bush announced in late March that the U.S. would immediately impose duties on all imports of coated paper from China.

Please forgive my ignorance, but what exactly has that got to do with piracy?

RE: Coated paper?
By James Holden on 4/11/07, Rating: 0
RE: Coated paper?
By phil verhey on 4/11/07, Rating: -1
RE: Coated paper?
By aftlizard01 on 4/11/2007 4:22:57 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah like the EU is any better.

RE: Coated paper?
By Ringold on 4/11/2007 11:23:17 PM , Rating: 2
Softwood lumber.. Canadian? Just a guess, but I recall reading we put some Canadians out of work with a lumber import tariff. Canada reaps what it sows, though, in terms of trade and politics.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Trade deficits don't matter. They've got little correlation, positive or negative, to growth -- which is all that really matters. The EU, for example, has a very slight deficit, but many of its members have surplus's.. but is it reflected in good unemployment or growth? No. The deficit merely reflects a business relationship; we buy their stuff, they invest their money back with us. If they stopped investing with us, we couldn't buy their stuff, and everybody suffers.

As for trade, I can't think of any country that has anything close to a good record, so focus your baseless hatred at something worthy. Every country has industries they're going to want to protect; that'll never change.

RE: Coated paper?
By emboss on 4/12/2007 7:24:38 PM , Rating: 2
I of course have a slightly biased view, but IMO New Zealand has a pretty good record :) Most of it due to the fact that pretty much all subsidies/tariffs/etc were abolished in the 80's, leading to much gnashing of teeth and loss of jobs at the time, but now resulting in some of the most efficient primary producers in the world (since they often have to compete against tariff- and subsidy-protected competitors).

The downside of this is that when it comes to negotiating trade agreements with other countries, we don't have a lot of things to negotiate with: "You remove your tariffs on lamb imports, and we'll ... umm ... let you import bricks without a tariff. That's right, you can ship all the bricks you want halfway around the world and not pay a cent in tariffs. What do you mean you aren't interested?!?"

One scorecard would be the number of complaints filed against a country at the WTO. Obviously this scales with regard to the amount of trade a country does, but does provide some insight. This table is at:


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