Egypt: traffic through Suez Canal starts up again as stranded ship finally freed

Ship traffic through the Suez Canal has slowly resumed after salvage teams managed to move the 200,000-tonne container ship that had blocked all passage through the crucial waterway for nearly a week.

Helped by the peak of high tide, a flotilla of tugboats managed to wrench the bow of the skyscraper-sized Ever Given from the sandy bank of the canal, where it has been lodged since last Tuesday.

Read more at: Traffic through Suez Canal starts up again as stranded ship finally freed | CBC News

Global Trade: World Economic Forum founder says Joe Biden 'will boost multilateralism' - by Isabelle Kumar

World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab says Joe Biden 'will boost multilateralism'

Read more at: World Economic Forum founder says Joe Biden 'will boost multilateralism' | Euronews

EU in Defense mode on Trade: In Trade War, EU Is Force to Be Reckoned With-Netherlands Warns

The European Union will act as one if the U.S hits France with tariffs and must stop being naive with powers like China, the Dutch Finance Minister warned.

Adding to growing calls for the bloc to do more to boost its economic sovereignty, Wopke Hoekstra said in an interview that the EU shouldn’t sit idly as countries like China subsidize their companies, or Donald Trump’s administration turns against its member states.

Faced with a global stage that’s increasingly dominated by the U.S. and China, the EU has come under pressure from some members to ensure a level playing field for its companies so that they can better compete with rivals that receive a helping hand from their governments.

“It is simply unacceptable that we are playing by the rules and some others just do whatever they like and by state support have the ability to outcompete some of our companies,” Hoekstra said recently.

“If we lookat the airline industry it’s bizarre that a great company like Air France-KLM is competing in a completely unlevel playing field with some of the carriers from outside the EU.”

His comments follow a recent initiative by the Netherlands calling on the EU to overhaul its competition framework by granting the European Commission powers to perform checks on companies that could potentially distort markets.

The Dutch push comes as a new executive has just taken the EU’s helm in Brussels and as the issue of protecting the region’s industry is gaining more prominence amid the rise of economic nationalism across the world, including with Trump’s America first policies in the U.S.

Read more at: In Trade War, EU Is Force to Be Reckoned With, Netherlands Warns - Bloomberg

EU Economy: Euro area international trade in goods surplus € 2 5 . 4 bn ($31.52 bn). December 2017

The first estimate for euro area (A19) exports of goods to the rest of the world in December 2017 was €180.7 billion, an increase of 1.0% compared with December 2016 (€179.0 bn).

Imports from the rest of the world stood at €155.3 bn, a rise of 2.5% compared with December 2016 (€151.4 bn). As a result, the EURO  area recorded a €25.4 bn surplus in trade in goods with the rest of the world in December 2017, compared with +€27.6 bn in December2016.

EURO area  trade rose to €142.4 bn in December 2017, up by 2.8% compared with December 2016

EU-Digest

EU Economy: Germany and EU urged to take advantage of US protectionism

Germany is looking to take advantage of trade opportunities in Asia and South America from the United States turning protectionist.

After President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, Germany’s Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Trump is shutting doors which can open for other countries.

Gabriel, addressing an energy industry summit in Berlin on Tuesday, said: “Of course, if the US president starts a trade conflict – I don’t want to call it ‘trade war’ – with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and with China. Of course, we in Europe should tell the ASEAN states and also China and India: ‘We have no interest in a trade conflict, we want to be fair partners’ – and we have to ask China to reciprocate – but we should take advantage of the opportunities that open up.”

Of Trump he said: “He will run a protectionist and nationalist programme, and we cannot respond in the same way. We need to act by becoming more competitive, investing in our infrastructure, in digitalisation, in education, we simply need to get better. And we need to look for partners who want to achieve those things with us and I believe they exist. When someone shuts doors – and he is shutting doors – others open somewhere else, that I am sure of.”

Earlier in an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper, Gabriel pointed out that just 10 percent of German exports go to the US, while 60 percent go to other countries in Europe which shows where its economic interests lie.

“Germany should act with self-confidence and not be fearful or servile,” he said, given that it is a “highly successful, technologically advanced export nation with many hard-working people and smart companies.”

"US Trade barriers “doomed to fail”

The European Union’s partners have thrown more energy into trade talks with the bloc since Donald Trump’s election, the EU’s trade chief said on Tuesday, warning that those backing trade barriers were “doomed to fail”.

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said EU-US trade negotiations were “firmly in the freezer” and that, while the United States was the EU’s most important partner, there was a long list of countries wanting to deal with the 28-nation bloc.

“If anything, since November, we have seen many of our partners throw more energy and more resources at their negotiations with the EU,” she told a conference at the Bruegel economic think tank in Brussels.

Trade was essential for employment – with some 31 million European jobs dependent on exports – and was a way to spread good values and standards across the globe and to lift people in developing countries out of poverty, Malmstrom said.

Most countries, she said, still shared the same vision, believing in the benefits of open trade and investments.

“Those who, in the 21st century, think that we can become great again by rebuilding borders, reimposing trade barriers, restricting people’s freedom to move, are doomed to fail,” she said in what also appeared to be a dig at Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. 

China could potentially also replace the US as the EU's major trading partner.

Read more: Germany and EU urged to take advantage of US protectionism | Euronews

Global Trade - USA: Political Disaster in the making: Trump’s zero-sum worldview spells trouble for trade - by Lawrence Herman

Donald TRump: Political Disaster in the making

As a Nobel Laureate once said, “The times they are a-changin’.”

The global trading system has been thrown into disarray with Donald Trump’s election and his clear disdain for international trade commitments – or, put another way, his stridently protectionist policies designed, he says, to make America great again.

This amounts to a decisive turnaround from the leadership role U.S. administrations have played since formulating the Bretton Woods agreements of 1947-48. Those American-led efforts produced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and ultimately the WTO Agreement of 1994, with the United States leading and cajoling other governments to agree to an orderly international trading system based on widely, if not universally, respected rules.

Now, it seems, that leadership role is no longer in play, incompatible with Mr. Trump’s thumping on the campaign trail, slamming the TPP and NAFTA so often that it’s impossible to imagine that these positions won’t dominate the new policy agenda on U.S. trade.

In effect, we’ve gone from a reasonably secure international trading system with known signposts and respect for rules to largely unknown and uncharted territory. All of this in the span of a few weeks.

Some observers say, with some justification, that we still need to see where all that rhetoric about the TPP and NAFTA being a “disaster” is leading. Fair enough. Protectionist bombast in the hurly-burly of a presidential campaign may not translate into actual anti-free-trade policies once Mr. Trump takes office.

It’s true we still don’t know Mr. Trump’s real agenda or who will comprise his entire trade policy team, notably his choice of the new U.S. Trade Representative and other senior trade officials. We also have the Congress in the background, with its very important role in trade policy as a check to presidential excesses.

But the signals aren’t propitious. There’s not much likelihood of the Trump administration looking kindly on its trading partners, Canada included. The message to the world is that trade is a zero-sum game and that all deals have to be weighed purely in terms of what’s in it for the United States, full stop. Forget mutual concessions and balanced outcomes.

So while we await some policy direction from Washington, we should have no illusions. Canada-U.S. trade could be in for some stormy times. Our government has to prepare for all contingencies under the worst-case scenarios with NAFTA on the chopping block.

That means not only having Plan B well developed but also having plans C, D, E and F ready to roll out as events unfold.

What are the broad indicators as we await those events?

Even before Mr. Trump’s election, international trade has been under some stress, the WTO recently reporting an increase in protectionist measures worldwide.

In the negotiating arena, efforts under the WTO umbrella to achieve some modest advances in discrete fields after the collapse of the Doha Round have been making glacial progress and same have stalled, showing how fraught these processes have become.

On the more-contained regional front, the TPP was indeed successfully concluded, but Mr. Trump has put that deal into deep-freeze. Some hope remains that the inter-Asian trade and economic negotiations, led by China but without U.S. involvement, can achieve some traction, but progress is reportedly slow.

Given the difficulties in the multilateral arena and the slow pace in other regional trade deals, and with the U.S. retrenchment from leadership in advancing global rules, Canada and the rest of the world will have to adjust to this new reality.

The times really are a-changin’.

As others have written in this paper, Canada’s top challenge will be to maintain access to the U.S. market paid for under both the original free-trade agreement of 1988 and NAFTA. These were the result of balanced concessions during arduous negotiations. Canada gained that access by granting benefits to U.S. exporters and investors and by adjusting national policies, particularly in respect of guaranteeing the U.S. access to Canadian energy supplies.

An increase in U.S. protectionism, whatever form that takes, will inevitably mean a turn to bilateral trade arrangements as countries seek some cover from the loss of access to the U.S. market.

For Canada, this means injecting some effort into ongoing bilateral trade talks with Japan. Negotiations with China have been hinted at and the government may choose to add some steam to that file as well. There are also the stalled bilateral Canada-India negotiations that could be given a push.

Other countries will also see the need to solidify bilateral links as a hedge against reduced access to the U.S. market and an increase in U.S. protectionism, whatever form it takes.

This isn’t to suggest the sky is falling. Global business will continue through multiple supply chains and commercial arrangements.

However, once the Trump administration takes over, the established order of things will certainly be changed.

We’ll be in uncharted territory with the largest ship being captained by someone that doesn’t read or respect the rules of navigation.

Read more: Trump’s zero-sum worldview spells trouble for trade - The Globe and Mail

Shipping - Canada: Bump in container shipping a boon to Canada - by Jacqueline Nelson

The world’s largest shipping company is seeing signs of stronger global container traffic, something already reflected in activity at several Canadian ports where trading volumes have been on the rise.

Recently, Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk AS said its second-quarter profit nearly tripled from a year earlier to $2.3-billion (U.S.), helped in part by a particularly strong 6.6-per-cent increase in shipping volumes in its container business unit Maersk Line. The company also raised its full-year profit forecast.

“Asia, Europe [region] is up by around 9 per cent, which is much above what you would expect given the economic development,” Nils Andersen, chief executive of Maersk, said on a conference call with analysts.

The company has forecast global container demand to grow by 4 to 5 per cent in 2014.
Other major shipping companies such as Hong Kong’s Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) and Germany-based Hapag-Lloyd AG have also posted increases in container shipping volumes in recent financial reports.

Global trade is conducted largely at sea. About 80 per cent of internationally-traded goods are sent by ship at some point in their journey, according to The Baltic Exchange, which tracks the maritime market.

And Canada is getting a piece of the action. Trade volume moving in and out of Canada by water is expected to double in 15 to 20 years, according to the Association of Canadian Port Authorities (ACPA). This will be a boon for both shipping companies and the ports that service them.

Canada’s National Ports System has 18 major port authorities involved in shipping of 310 million tonnes of goods each year. These items include imported electronics and clothing, and exported natural resources, such as lumber, and are valued at more than $162-billion (Canadian) per year.

Read more: Bump in container shipping a boon to Canada - The Globe and Mail

Angela Merkel on Europe: 'We Are All in the Same Boat'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel

In a SPIEGEL interview, Chancellor Angela Merkel discusses Germany's power in the euro crisis and explains why the country exports weapons to authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia.

Some excerpts of the interview:
  
SPIEGEL: The mixture of one-party rule and capitalism seems to work very well in China. Nevertheless, will the Western model, the combination of market economy and constitutional democracy, ever stand a chance in such countries?
Merkel: Human rights are indivisible. Human dignity isn't just important in Germany, but everywhere in the world. I'm convinced that the rule of law, democracy and freedom will be unstoppable everywhere in the long run.
SPIEGEL: Does that mean that countries like China will come to resemble Europe more than the other way around?
Merkel: Human rights are indivisible. Aside from that, it's important for Germans and Europeans to recognize that China is going to great lengths to become prosperous, as well. If, in doing so, it behaves fairly in relation to global competitors, we have no right to stand in its way. Instead, we have to make sure that we keep up with this dynamic economic development and take advantage of our opportunities in connection with the country's rise to prominence. At the same time, I'm under the impression that the Chinese leadership is certainly aware that the population expects greater respect for the rule of law, more efforts to fight corruption, more environmental protection and more freedom.
 SPIEGEL: There is a curious circumstance by which you are very popular here in Germany but a controversial figure in other parts of Europe. Do you pay too much attention to German interests and too little to European neighbors?
Merkel: As the German chancellor, I always want to best for Germany and for Europe because I am profoundly convinced that Europe's prosperity in 20 years depends on how we set the course today. If we do not view ourselves and our strengths and weaknesses in a global context, if we forget or ignore how hard countries in Asia or South America are working to become more competitive, Europe will fall behind globally. We have to have this discussion, even if it is controversial at times.

For the complete SPIEGEL Interview with Angela Merkel on Euro Crisis and Arms Exports - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Market Watch: Rebound in trade is key to Dutch economy, minister says - by Polya Lesova

For the complete report from MarketWatch or to watch the interview on video click on this link

A rebound in global trade holds the key to the Netherlands avoiding a deeper recession, the Dutch minister for European affairs said Friday. "The Dutch economy depends on trade, and the only way to get growth back on the agenda is by having more trade," said minister Frans Timmermans in a broad-ranging interview with MarketWatch. The outlook for global trade "doesn't look good for the next couple of years," he said. "We need to make sure that there is no protectionism, so that we can get trade going as soon as we can."