Chinese Customs seized more than 300,000 tons of smuggled imported trash in a scheme that involved at least 115 suspects and 22 smuggling groups, according to a report by state-run news agency Xinhua. China imports solid waste as a source of raw materials, the report said, but will “phase out and completely halt such imports” by the end of 2019 “except for those containing resources that are not substitutable.”
China’s reduction in value-added-tax rates will cover a broad scope of Chinese imports and will officially take effect April 1, according to a March 22 press release from China’s State Council. Taxpayers that are subject to the 16 percent VAT rate will see a drop to 13 percent, according to the release, while those subject to the 10 percent VAT rate will see a drop to 9 percent. In addition, the VAT rate for agricultural products will drop from 10 percent to 9 percent. The VAT changes also include an “extension in the scale of goods and services eligible for input tax deductions,” the release said.
At a recent Beijing trade conference, Chinese Assistant Minister of Commerce Ren Hongbin said that the country plans to “enhance the quality of foreign trade” to steer out of China’s “complicated and severe” trade environment, according to a March 19 press release from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. Ren introduced a broad 10-step plan to achieve this, according to the release, which includes expanding imports, promoting “high quality development of foreign trade” and increasing “structural reform of foreign trade.” Ren also suggested supporting and exploring “new modes of trade,” such as “cross-border e-commerce.”
The European Union and China need to “develop a more balanced and reciprocal economic relationship” in light of China’s “proactive and state-driven industrial and economic policies,” the European Commission said in a report on the EU-China strategic outlook, dated March 12. Echoing recent U.S. criticism of China, the report calls out China’s favoring of its own domestic champions, including when enforcing intellectual property rights and other domestic laws, as well as investment restrictions and forced technology transfer. A more balanced relationship “can be achieved through various means: by working together with China in international fora to upgrade the rules and by making decisive progress in bilateral negotiations, but also by making use of tools such as the recently modernised and strengthened trade defence instruments,” the report said.
Counterfeit goods made up as much as 6.8 percent of total imports into the European Union in 2016, up from 5 percent just three years earlier, mirroring a worldwide increase in trade in counterfeits, the European Union Intellectual Property Office said in a new report. China remained the world’s top shipper of counterfeits, though Hong Kong plays an increasing role as a transit point, and “India, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates remain among the top provenance economies,” the report said.
The European Court of Auditors on March 14 issued a report on the European Union’s system for monitoring organic products, including imports. According to the report, EU member state monitoring of organic products and importers is still incomplete, and import supervision could be improved by better cooperation between member states and with the exporting countries. The report also discusses changes to the EU’s equivalence scheme that will set more stringent requirements for countries allowed to export organic products to the EU, as well as the EU’s work improving its monitoring of organic exporters to the EU, particularly in China.