Breaking Waves
- Trade stinks. That’s the conclusion one might draw from Sweden’s seizure of 28 tons of smuggled Chinese garlic. The garlic was hidden (how can you hide 28 tons of garlic?) in a truck crossing the Swedish border from Norway. Norway has no duties on garlic, but Sweden is in the European Union, which has a 9.6% customs duty on the stuff – giving incentive to the smuggling trade. The seizure, however, is only a small part of the 1,200 tons of garlic that Brussels says came in through Norway in the past year. China, by the way, produces about 75% of the world’s garlic.
- Special for trade policy wonks: the Peterson Institute for International Economics has examined protectionism by the G20 countries – and finds most of them wanting. Here are the rankings for most protectionist actions implemented or proposed between July 2008 and April 2010:
Who knew that Saudi Arabia would be the G20's best free-trader?
- I didn’t watch President Obama’s latest speech about the National Export Initiative until after yesterday’s post about the NEI was published. But I didn’t hear anything to change my opinion. The NEI is mostly good rhetoric, but the same rhetoric that has been used by every president since Lyndon Johnson (and probably earlier). An increased export promotion budget is the main event here, and possibly better availability of small business export credit. Obama reiterated that he plans to reopen the FTA with South Korea to renegotiate something that has already been negotiated twice. Bet the Koreans hang tough this time.
- The Federation of International Trade Associations (see link to the right) had a couple of interesting links in its weekly e-newsletter, both dealing with living and working abroad. One was to a site called International Business Etiquette, which is self-explanatory but with some good stuff in it. The second site, International Living, takes a bit more explanation. The site is aimed at people considering retirement overseas, but there is a lot of cost and other information that might be useful in investment decisions, or for marketing if your company targets lucrative expat communities.
