Import tariff to go down to 9.9%

www.chinaview.cn 2004-12-21

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- The Tariff Policy Commission of the State Council has announced that China will further cut import tariffs on more than 900 products beginning January 1 of 2005.

    This will lower the general level of import tariffs to 9.9 percent from the current level of 10.4 percent.

    Meanwhile, China will resume the collection of export tariffs on resource-related products from January 1, 2005, which analysts say is a move to meet strong domestic demand.

    China will also start collecting specific export tariffs on six kinds of textile products, resume collection of export tariffs on high-energy consumption products and impose a three-month interim export tariff on urea, a synthetic fertilizer, from January 1, 2005.

    After the adjustment, the average import tariff for farm produce will drop from 15.6 percent to 15.3 percent; industrial goods from 9.5 percent to 9.0 percent.

    Among them, the import tariff for textiles and clothing will be11.4 percent; chemical products 6.9 percent; vehicles 13.3 percent; machinery 8.0 percent and electronic products 9.1 percent.

    From January 1, 2005, China will levy specific export tariffs on six kinds of textile products, including coats and skirts.

    The tariff will help encourage the export of high value-added products and optimize the mix of Chinese textile exports, Chong, an official with the Ministry of Commerce said. The tariff rate "will be set by considering the conditions of textile manufacturers."

    "It is also a self-regulation act to avoid anti-dumping actions of other countries," said an official with the General Administration of Customs of China.

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Taiwanese Official Pushes for FTA with US

14 Dec 2004, ST&R

Taiwanese Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yueh was in Washington to meet with government and industry officials and discuss ways to improve bilateral economic ties. Ho indicated that Taiwan intends to lobby harder for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the US, a development it appears to feel is more likely now that it has taken a number of measures in recent months to address US concerns on intellectual property rights (IPR), pharmaceuticals, and agriculture. Ho acknowledged that it will take “enormous efforts” to reach an FTA but said she would press her US counterparts to “speed up preparatory work.” US business groups, who say they are encouraged by the fact that the White House has not ruled out a bilateral deal, plan to start building support in Congress in hopes of launching negotiations within the next two years.

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Canadian National's commitment in Wisconsin questioned
Posted on Tuesday, December 14 www.railforum.com

MILWAUKEE, Wisc. -- Reacting to increases in shipping fees on the Canadian National Railway Co. and an aborted move by the railroad to cut service, some business executives are questioning the firm's commitment to northern Wisconsin.

The developments have sparked formation of an informal coalition of rail users and a state study on the economic importance of the railroad in the region.

Some immediate fears were allayed when Canadian National, a publicly traded company that runs a transcontinental rail system, reversed course on plans last summer to trim service in Rhinelander from five days a week to three.

Those plans were derailed, but executives and others fear they presage cutbacks down the line.

"The concern is really about the future of rail in Wisconsin and particularly in northern Wisconsin and in rural Wisconsin," said Patrick Schillinger, president of the Wisconsin Paper Council, a trade association for the pulp and paper industry.

Canadian National, which became the state's largest railroad with its $1.2 billion purchase of the Wisconsin Central Ltd. three years ago, says it is committed to northern Wisconsin.

At the same time, CN consultant and lobbyist Kevin Soucie said rail lines have a future only if they are profitable. Though he would not say whether they were making money now, Soucie said some of the lighter-density northern Wisconsin lines, when CN acquired them, were not viable over the long term.

"The service had to be adjusted to make them work financially," he said.

That involves a delicate balancing act: If costs aren't cut enough, or rates aren't high enough, the railroad loses money. At the same time, service reductions and price increases can prompt shippers to switch to trucking -- with the reduced freight volumes further undercutting the line's viability.

That spiral -- leading to abandonment of lines -- is what some business people fear will happen, said Jack Sroka, executive director of the Lincoln County Economic Development Corp.

The Canadian National is the only railroad across much of the region and is crucial to many manufacturers, Schillinger said.

"For heavy industrial users like the paper industry, there is no cost-effective replacement for rail service," he said. "It's still a very important transportation mode for our members."

"The biggest problem we have with the CN is they have a business plan; they don't want to be a short-line, local district railroad," said Daniel Bruso, manager of the Oldenburg Group Inc. metal fabrication plant in Rhinelander.

He said CN bought the Wisconsin Central chiefly for the line between Superior and Chicago. Acquiring that track plugged a gap in the company's continent-spanning system and gave it a continuous stretch of CN-owned rail from Canada's west coast to New Orleans. But CN also picked up hundreds of miles of shorter lines.

Not so, Soucie said.

"CN is in the railroad business," he said. "It's in the business of moving freight, and if someone wants to move freight, as long as it's profitable, CN is interested in moving it."

But people such as Bruce Ridley, manager of the Packaging Corp. of America paper mill in Tomahawk, say CN has balked at offering long-term service commitments. That, Ridley said, "is disconcerting, to say the least."

The Tomahawk mill employs 480 people turning out "medium" -- the squiggly stuff in the center of a piece of corrugated cardboard.

The mill ships some of that to the company's cardboard box plant in Colby, about 120 miles southwest of Tomahawk, by rail. The mill used to send medium via the CN -- about 20 carloads a month. But in mid-summer, Ridley said, the railroad raised rates for the company on hauls of less than 500 miles and cut service to Colby from five days a week to three.

He said the company had cut back rail shipping elsewhere, too, because of changes by CN. Since January, Ridley said, the Tomahawk mill has gone from shipping out more than 650 rail cars a month to about 550.

Bill Johnson, owner of Johnson Timber Corp., a forest-products company based in Hayward, told a Wisconsin Assembly committee in August that "CN is continually threatening to close rail spurs due to lack of volume, or even more disheartening, hiking prices at these spurs to price themselves out of the marketplace."

Concerns such as Ridley's and Johnson's have spurred affected businesses to meet informally as a group and prompted the state Department of Transportation to analyze the economic effect of rail service in northern Wisconsin.

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Federal regulators reject UP effort to contract out safety inspections to Mexico
Posted on Tuesday, December 21  www.railforum.com

WASHINGTON -- The following statement was issued by Edward Wytkind, President of the AFL-CIO's Transportation Trades Department, in response to the U.S. Department of Transportation's denial of a waiver request, before the Federal Railroad Administration, by Union Pacific Railroad to allow safety inspections of its U.S.-bound trains to be performed by private contractors in Mexico:

"We are pleased that the Department of Transportation has rejected Union Pacific's (UP) ill-advised and unsafe proposal to outsource its cross-border train inspection responsibilities to Mexico.

"We urged the parent agency, the Department of Transportation, to intervene in this matter with the Federal Railroad Administration with the sincere hope that our safety concerns surrounding the UP petition would receive a fair hearing. We are pleased that the DOT agreed with our view that UP's foreign train inspection scheme posed far too many safety risks to be ignored.

"Dangerous corporate maneuvers designed to boost profits at the expense of safety should be rejected whenever they are brought before federal regulators. We will remain active in future proceedings for we have probably not seen the last of these dangerous, self-serving proposals."