The United States will step up efforts for free, open and transparent trade across the Asia Pacific region as it seeks to double US exports in five years, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
Farmers in the UK have warned the EU against a trade deal with Mercosur which could see Brazil and Argentina given access to the European meat market, potentially flooding the market with cheap imports and undermining domestic producers.
China plans to build 10 million low-cost homes this year at a cost of 200 billion US dollars, a government minister has said. The move comes as soaring home prices spur complaints about affordability.
Oil dropped for a second day in New York as members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries considered talks about increasing production because violence is disrupting supplies from Libya.
A trade agreement with Mercosur should not have to destroy the European beef industry, said on Tuesday a spokesperson for the European Community who added that such fears are ‘exaggerated’.
The European Parliament passed a highly critical report on trade negotiations between the EU and the Mercosur bloc for considering that they may imply “farming concessions damaging to European producers.”
Ms. Nemat Shafik, a national of Egypt and the UK has been nominated to the position of Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. She will succeed Mr. Murilo Portugal, who resigned effective March 4, 2011.
China, normally contrary to releasing unemployment figures, has admitted to having a “labour surplus” of 32 million workers, according to Human Resources and Social Security minister Yin Weimin.
Chile’s Concha y Toro, Latin America’s largest wine producer, sealed a deal this week with Brown-Forman’s Fetzer Vineyards in a transaction worth 238 million US dollars to purchase its portfolio of American wine brands. The sale is expected to close in April 2011.
Uruguayan investors have purchased an estimated 1.1 million hectares in the Paraguayan Chaco, (heartland of landlocked Paraguay) in spite of the fact land prices have quadrupled in the last two years. The record year was 2010 with 200.000 hectares.