http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/technology/wto-tech-tariffs.html
W.T.O. Fails on High-Tech Tariff Deal By JONATHAN WEISMAN and PAUL MOZUR DEC. 12, 2014 WASHINGTON — Last month, their faces beaming with self-congratulatory enthusiasm, President Obama and China’s president, Xi Jinping, announced an agreement to drop tariffs on a range of high-technology products, an accord that was supposed to propel far more significant trade talks in the weeks to come. On Friday in Geneva, those talks on technology trade collapsed in acrimony, a sign that China is still unwilling to open its markets to competition where it is most vulnerable. “We came to Geneva this week and worked hard to build a consensus around the bilateral agreement we concluded with China,” Michael W. Punke, deputy United States trade representative and the United States ambassador to the World Trade Organization, said in a statement. “Like everyone in the room, we are disappointed not to be celebrating a deal this week. We missed a big opportunity.” The Geneva talks aimed to reduce global tariffs on $1 trillion in high-tech goods, be it small-bore consumer electronics like video game consoles or big-ticket items like magnetic resonance imaging machines and advanced semiconductors. Experts say a breakthrough could have saved as much as $15 billion a year in tariffs and generated hundreds of thousands of jobs across the globe. But the talks broke down in the middle of a face-off between China and South Korea over liquid-crystal display television screens, a market where China strongly wants to expand. After difficult negotiations, South Korea was willing to lower tariffs on LCDs. But the Korean delegation wanted China to offer at least a face-saving concession, most likely in advanced lithium batteries, a product in which China already has a billion-dollar trade surplus, according to an American official with knowledge of the talks. China rebuffed appeals from American and Korean negotiators, even from the head of the W.T.O. [snip] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
