WHAT ABOUT THE STEEL!?!:

US to scrap 92% of tariffs on S'pore under FTA: Electronics, chemicals, petrochemicals among export sectors that will benefit most (Chuang Peck Ming, 17 Dec 2002, Business Times)

Within eight years of the FTA, all tariffs on Singapore exports will be removed. That is, by 2012 - if the pact takes off in 2004 as expected.

The US is serious in pushing for free trade. It has proposed to the 144 member countries of the World Trade Organization that they slash all tariffs on consumer and industrial goods by 2015.

While there's still one last hurdle in the US-Singapore FTA - one that concerns Singapore's right to exercise capital control in a financial crisis - the expectation is it will be tackled by year-end when the legal text of the FTA is also likely to be ready.

Already, Chile, in clinching a similar trade deal with the US, has won the right to use capital controls to stem the flow of some types of capital from the country for as long as a year. 'We convinced them that an economy like ours, confronted with the turbulence of the international financial markets, can suffer attacks beyond the ability of policy to control them,' Chilean Finance Minister Nicolas Eyzaguirre told reporters last week.

This should pave the way for a similar compromise with Singapore, another open economy. Observers are convinced the US would not scuttle the deal over a relatively small concession after having gone through so much to arrive at where they are - and also after paying a heavy price to secure from Congress the Trade Promotion Authority in its push for FTAs.

Besides, they added, the US is keen to use the US-Singapore FTA - its first FTA with an Asian country - as a template for agreements with others in the region, especially in the wake of similar overtures by China.

Still think George W. Bush is a closet protectionist? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 19, 2002 7:51 AM