Officials from Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member countries are refining targeting and forensic identification methods to distinguish between legal and illegal wood at customs checkpoints, according to an Aug. 22 news release detailing an ongoing APEC meeting in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. APEC members are sharing guidance to inform handling of shipments upon discovery and to support more effective preventive action, the release says. Approaches include opening communication lines to curtail fake document use as well as bribery and corruption linked to “high-level perpetrators,” the release says.
The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) filed comments with the World Trade Organization opposing China’s intent to ban certain scrap imports, ISRI announced on Aug. 21. ISRI is requesting a “revision” of the policy and clarification of its scope, asserting that the solid waste ban would hurt U.S. and Chinese recycling industries, parts of the Chinese manufacturing sector, and environmental sustainability opportunities in China, the association said. While the policy’s aims are noble, such an import ban isn’t likely to help improve the environment, ISRI said. China accounts for over half of the world’s total imports of recycled commodities, including recovered paper and fiber, and plastic and copper scrap, so any change in Chinese policy would be “quickly felt” around the world, the group said. “There is a need to distinguish scrap from waste within the Notification, as well as in the underlying regulations and related notices issued by the Chinese, in order to properly identify those materials for which the Chinese Government intends to truly impose a ban, while at the same time providing clarity for the exporting community as to what products are permissible for import,” ISRI said in a statement.
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) members are focusing on aligning technical terms for food safety export paperwork, and paring down requirements exceeding baseline needs for food safety, as the group’s Committee on Trade and Investment meets in Ho Chi Minh City through Aug. 25, APEC said. “Certificate requirements need to have a clear purpose and need to be practical to be effective,” said Robert Macke, deputy administrator of the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Foreign Agricultural Service, which is overseeing food export certificate cooperation in APEC. “Our goal is to facilitate regulations in the Asia-Pacific that are grounded in science and applied only to the extent necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health," he said. 'Where trade in a particular food product has low risk, certification may not play a necessary or legitimate role.” Industry representatives and agriculture and regulatory officials from APEC countries are concurrently meeting in Can Tho, Vietnam, Aug. 18-25 to take “policy steps towards safer and more robust food trade in the region,” APEC said.
The World Customs Organization issued the following release on commercial trade and related matters:
The World Trade Organization recently posted the following notices:
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) members opened two weeks of trade talks in Ho Chi Minh City that will culminate in a senior officials meeting Aug. 29-30, it announced. Regional measures for enhancing e-commerce growth and “secure trade,” such as clamping down on illegal timber and wood product exports, will be “taken forward” by officials, APEC said. Officials will also focus on increasing transparency and participation in trade agreement negotiations while easing trade barriers “at and behind borders,” as well as promoting trade in the automobile, health, and information and communication technology sectors, APEC said. “Creating a policy environment that better accommodates emerging sectors, and the skills, technology and supply chains that underpin them, is at the top of our to-do list,” APEC Secretariat Executive Director Alan Bollard said in a statement.
The World Customs Organization issued the following release on commercial trade and related matters:
In recent editions of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted (here):
The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices as of Aug. 16 (some may also be given separate headlines):
The United Kingdom laid out two possible future customs arrangements in a new document that could help maintain smooth trade processing once the UK leaves the EU, the UK said in an Aug. 15 news release. One post-Brexit approach would use a "highly streamlined" arrangement that would "continue some existing arrangements we have with the EU, reduce or remove barriers to trade through new arrangements, and adopt technology-based solutions to make it easier for businesses to comply with customs procedures," the UK said in the release. The other approach includes alignment of the UK's "approach to the customs border in a way that removes the need for a UK-EU customs border."