02.10.2018

CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL NEGINT Brasília, 02 de outubro de 2018

Índice I. OMC _______________________________________________ 2 The WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF have formed a dream team to counter Trump's trade war _______________________________________________ 2 Sops for skimmed milk powder exports come under WTO lens ____________ 3 II. NEGOCIAÇÕES REGIONAIS E BILATERAIS _________________ 4 Factbox: Details of the new North America free trade deal _______________ 4 III. OUTROS ____________________________________________ 7 Representantes del Mercosur definen políticas educativas para la región ____ 7 Trump Singles Out Brazil for Treatment of American Companies __________ 10 Brazil votes on Sunday. And Brazilian women have a better chance at reshaping its politics than ever before. ______________________________________ 11

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I. OMC The WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF have formed a dream team to counter Trump's trade war Business Insider (Reino Unido) The functions of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank may vary, but the three institutions came together to publish a joint report expressing the urgency to reform international trade. They expressed the importance of 'harnessing the unique strength of the WTO' by focusing on global e-commerce regulations, improved negotiating mechanisms, and increased transparency in trade policies around the world. The report, Reinvigorating Trade and Inclusive Growth, comes right after President Donald Trump harshly questioned America's involvement in global institutions like the WTO. The question for developing nations Ordinarily, the WTO has seven judges in its Dispute Settlement Court, but currently, only four are in positions of appointment. Reports indicate that the US has been blocking more people from coming on board. If the number of judges gets any lower, the WTO won't have enough people on the panel to deliver rulings. It's popular opinion is that the organisation is currently failing its role and being used as an instrument for retaliatory tariff wars. The question for India is a little more complicated than just being protectionist or proglobalization because the WTO, though a global institution, has often been accused of being biased against developing nations. Last year India even told the WTO: "Such presentations by the secretariat within or outside the WTO go far beyond the remit of the functions of the WTO secretariat, and violate the letter and spirit of the agreement establishing the WTO," when the organisation was seeking outcomes on e-commerce and investment facilitation initiatives.

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Director General, Roberto Azevedo, had earlier warned world leaders that the current trade tensions have the potential to cause great harm to the world economy and it undermines the trading order that was established after World War II. The ripple events will cause job loss and hit economic growth, with the under-developed and developing nations bearing the brunt.

Sops for skimmed milk powder exports come under WTO lens BusinessLine (Índia) Export incentives given to the skimmed milk powder (SMP) industry by the Centre and the Gujarat and Maharashtra governments, to help ease the glut in the domestic market, are under scrutiny at the World Trade Organization (WTO). “Members including the EU, the US, New Zealand and Australia have asked India to explain how the move was in line with the existing agreement on agriculture of the WTO and the decision to eliminate all export subsidies,” a Geneva-based official, privy to a recent meeting of the WTO’s Committee on Agriculture, said. In July, the Directorate-General of Foreign Trade notified 10 per cent export incentive for milk powder, under the Merchandise Export from India Scheme. Gujarat and Maharashtra, the two leading milk-producing States in the country, too offered a ₹50,000 per tonne subsidy for exports of SMP in response to the domestic dairy sector suffering due to a sharp fall in prices due to excessive stocks. With India no longer in the bracket of economies with average yearly gross national income less that $1,000, it does not qualify for giving export subsidies according to WTO rules. “India, defending the package announced by the two States, said financial supports provided through various State policies compensate marketing, handling, distribution and associated costs of farmers for their exports, which are allowed under WTO Agriculture Agreement Article 9, and that supports are temporary,” the official said.

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Questioning the 10 per cent export incentive approved by the Centre, the US pointed out that India did not have any scheduled export subsidy entitlements. It asked New Delhi to explain how these measures were implemented and also provide the eligibility criteria. Interestingly, the MEIS, under which the 10 per cent subsidy has been provided to dairy exporters by the Centre, is one of the five export promotion measures against which the US filed a WTO dispute earlier this year stating that they flouted multilateral rules. New Zealand, in its submission, pointed out that Gujarat was implementing a provision of up to $44 million to support the Gujarat Milk Marketing Federation to export 60,000 tonnes of skimmed milk powder. The funding will subsidise the export of Indian skimmed milk powder and significantly impact international trade of the same, it said, seeking details including eligibility for receiving payments, the criteria for making payments and how the scheme will be implemented. New Delhi now has to provide satisfactory answers to the queries failing which members may threaten to lodge a dispute against the measures at the WTO.

II. NEGOCIAÇÕES REGIONAIS E BILATERAIS Factbox: Details of the new North America free trade deal Reuters (Reino Unido) The United States and Canada forged a last-gasp deal on Sunday to salvage a threecountry, $1.2 trillion open-trade zone agreement with Mexico that had been about to collapse after nearly a quarter century. Here are some of the details in the agreement, which will change its name from NAFTA to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and must be ratified by each country’s legislature before it takes effect: RETAIL

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The deal would raise Canada’s minimum duty-free shipment threshold, but by less than the United States had wanted, a relief for Canadian retailers facing competition from online stores based in the United States. Canadian residents buying from U.S. retailers will not pay duty on purchases below C$150 and will not pay Canadian sales tax on purchases under C$40, according to the draft text. Mexico had agreed to a single $100 threshold. PHARMACEUTICALS The deal sets a 10-year period of protection for biologic drugs, a class that includes many of the world’s top-selling drugs like rheumatoid arthritis treatment Humira and cancer drug Avastin. That means Canadian patients will have to wait longer for cheaper generic alternatives, called biosimilars, to hit the market. Canada previously had an eight-year period of protection for those drugs, according to University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist. He said the longer period would likely result in higher drug prices and higher healthcare costs in Canada. WHEAT GRADING Canada and the United States agreed that wheat imported from the other country would not be treated less favorably than similar domestic wheat. U.S. farmers have complained that their wheat automatically receives the lowest price under Canada’s grading system. DAIRY Canada agreed to provide U.S. dairy farmers access to about 3.5 percent of its approximately $16 billion annual domestic dairy market, Canadian sources said, adding that the Canadian government was prepared to offer compensation to dairy farmers hurt by the deal. Under the agreement, Canada has agreed to eliminate its Class 6 and Class 7 milk categories and associated pricing schedules for skim milk, skim milk proteins and other components and ultrafiltered milk, within six months after the USMCA goes into force. U.S. farmers said those schedules had effectively pushed them out of the Canadian dairy market. The agreement will increase U.S. access to Canada’s dairy market beyond Trans-Pacific Partnership levels, a senior Trump administration official said.

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CHICKEN AND EGGS The United States gets tariff-free access to Canada for 57,000 tonnes of chicken by year six of the deal, growing 1 percent for an additional 10 years. Canada gives the United States access for 10 million dozen eggs and egg-equivalent products in year one, growing 1 percent for 10 more years. COPYRIGHT Copyright protection will extend for 70 years past an author’s death, in line with current U.S. law. In Canada, copyright generally extends for 50 years past death. DISPUTE RESOLUTION The deal will preserve a trade dispute settlement mechanism that Canada fought hard to maintain in order to protect its lumber industry and other sectors from U.S. anti-dumping tariffs. No substantial changes appear to have been made to the Chapter 19 trade dispute settlement mechanism, nor the state-to-state dispute settlement. But the agreement limits investor-state dispute settlement to preferential treatment cases and certain sectors dominated by state firms, such as energy and telecoms and infrastructure. Keeping Chapter 19 will not affect Washington’s enforcement of anti-dumping and antisubsidy laws, said a U.S. official. AUTOS SIDE LETTER A side letter to the agreement showed that U.S. President Donald Trump preserved the ability to impose threatened 25 percent global tariffs on autos while largely exempting passenger vehicles, pickup trucks and auto parts from Canada and Mexico. If Trump imposes so-called Section 232 auto tariffs on national security grounds, Mexico and Canada would each get a tariff-free passenger vehicle quota of 2.6 million passenger vehicles exported to the United States annually, well above their current export levels. Pickup trucks built in both countries will be exempted entirely.

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Additionally, Mexico will get an auto parts quota of $108 billion annually, while Canada will get a parts quota of $32.4 billion annually in the event of U.S. auto tariffs. RULES OF ORIGIN FOR AUTOS The deal set a five-year transition period after the agreement enters into force for the regional value content requirement for autos to increase to 75 percent, from the current 62.5 percent. It requires 40 percent of vehicle value to be made in high-wage areas paying $16 an hour, requiring significant automotive production in the United States and Canada. The pact also requires that vehicle manufacturers source at least 70 percent of their steel and aluminum from within the three countries. ENERGY Reflecting the concerns of Mexico’s incoming government that the agreement would limit the country’s control over its oil resources, the deal states that Mexico has the direct, inalienable and imprescriptible ownership of all hydrocarbons in its subsoil. Despite the strongly worded language, the energy chapter does not prevent foreign oil companies from producing oil in Mexico under a liberalization of the industry passed by the outgoing government.

III. OUTROS Representantes del Mercosur definen políticas educativas para la región La Diaria (Uruguai) Uruguay tiene la presidencia pro témpore del Mercosur hasta diciembre. Por eso se reunieron en Montevideo representantes del Sector Educativo del bloque. La semana pasada se sucedieron reuniones de distintas comisiones: Educación Básica, Educación Media, Educación Técnica, Formación Docente, y Protocolo de Reconocimiento de Estudios. 7

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Según dijo a la diaria Pablo Caggiani, integrante del Consejo de Educación Inicial y Primaria (CEIP), estas instancias de encuentro sirven “para avanzar en la integración regional, porque esos procesos no pueden ser sólo económicos, tiene que haber espacios de construcción de política que permita diseñar la circulación de los gurises, de los docentes, del conocimiento, y eso se hace en tanto haya intervención política de los actores”. Entre países Virginia Verderese, directora de Planeamiento Educativo del Consejo de Educación Técnico Profesional (CETP-UTU), trabajó junto con sus colegas del bloque en la Comisión de Reconocimiento de Estudios. “Se pudieron concretar tablas para la reválida de los títulos en áreas como construcción, electricidad, mecánica y electromecánica”, puntualizó la uruguaya, que destacó: “Ya nos planteamos un segundo desafío, que tiene que ver con fortalecer otras áreas tecnológicas, como la agraria, la audiovisual y la de la vestimenta”. Según el documento de trabajo de los representantes, la implementación de las tablas implicará “que exista un reconocimiento automático por parte de las instituciones de los estudios realizados en los países del Mercosur y asociados, en forma recíproca; que los procedimientos de reconocimiento de los títulos técnicos sea más ágil; que mejore la comunicación e intercambio entre referentes; y que sea posible el desarrollo profesionallaboral de los egresados y la continuidad educativa en los países del Mercosur”. “La migración recién llega a Uruguay, pero para otros países con otro volumen de estudiantes extranjeros esto era un desafío. Particularmente Argentina recibe mucha migración paraguaya y boliviana, y tienen trámites complejos de validación; ahora, con las tablas, se van a poder validar los títulos en cada provincia”, ejemplificó Verderese. Interculturalidad En relación con la educación básica se hizo fuerte hincapié en la primera infancia. El consejero detalló que los delegados ministeriales de los demás países visitaron centros públicos y privados y en las reuniones empezaron a delinear parámetros claros para definir qué se entiende por “calidad en primera infancia”. En la próxima presidencia, que estará a cargo de Argentina, tendrá lugar un seminario que terminaría por definir aspectos relacionados con la infraestructura, los aprendizajes y la formación docente para los primeros años de vida de los niños.

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La comisión de Educación Media también tuvo un trabajo intenso. Se llevó a cabo un taller en el que cada país contó su experiencia. “Del trabajo en la comisión emerge que el tema es un problema de todos los países, ya que en todos hay propuestas de modificar la matriz de la educación media para garantizar que efectivamente todos los jóvenes lleguen al bachillerato. En Brasil hay una reforma de la enseñanza superior relacionada con cambiar no sólo lo curricular sino también la concepción que hay detrás de la educación media, porque no puede ser una cuestión propedéutica. En Argentina ocurre lo mismo, con una reforma más compleja por la forma en que se procesa en ese país la discusión. En Paraguay hay una situación similar, con la preocupación de que los gurises dejan de estudiar por acceder al mercado laboral”, ilustró Caggiani. Agregó que “esta comisión se creó para visualizar los posibles caminos de salida que está ensayando cada uno de los países”. Otro de los grupos de trabajo abordó las escuelas interculturales de frontera. La idea es que en las escuelas cercanas a los límites de los países pueda reflejarse la interacción de la zona. “La experiencia implica un hermanamiento con escuelas que cercanas pero ubicadas en dos países diferentes, por ejemplo trabajando el portugués como segunda lengua, en el caso uruguayo. Implica generar proyectos en común”, explicó el consejero. Plata en el banco Uno de los principales desafíos del bloque es la ejecución del Fondo Educativo del Mercosur, al que aportan todos los países según la cantidad de estudiantes matriculados que tienen, con el objetivo de desarrollar proyectos que impacten en el sector educativo en clave regional, comentó Martina Lejtreger, directora de Relaciones Internacionales y Cooperación de la Administración Nacional de Educación Pública (ANEP). “Hay una incapacidad total de ejecución del fondo: ninguno de los ministerios puede recibir la plata por cuestiones legales de cómo recibir fondos externos. Durante años se acumuló, por lo que hasta el momento asciende a unos tres millones de dólares que no se pueden usar”, explicó. En 2016 se ejecutó por primera vez una parte del dinero acumulado en ese fondo en dos proyectos que llevó adelante la ANEP: la cuarta edición del Parlamento Juvenil y un proyecto regional de pasantías. Lejtreger enfatizó que están “tratando de encontrar una institucionalidad en el Mercosur que permita ejecutar esto, porque nadie quiere generar intereses en el banco, sino ejecutar proyectos”.

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Trump Singles Out Brazil for Treatment of American Companies Bloomberg (Estados Unidos) President Donald Trump is taking notice of Brazil. While celebrating a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico as an “historic” win that vindicated his strategy of threatening tariffs on trade partners, Trump said Brazil is treating U.S. companies unfairly. “They charge us whatever they want,” Trump said Monday in a Rose Garden ceremony, while responding to a question about high tariffs in India. He said U.S. companies describe Latin America’s largest economy as one of the toughest in the world. His predecessors and trade representatives have never questioned Brazil about unfair trade conditions, the president said. "We don’t call them and say ‘hey, you’re treating our companies unfairly’.” Brazil, which is largely dependent on exports of commodities such as soybeans and iron ore, ships mostly processed goods including jets, steel and pulp to the U.S., which is also the largest buyer of its coffee. In return, the South American country is a destination for U.S. fuel, chemicals and medicines. Trade between the two countries totaled about $52 billion last year, data from Brazil’s foreign trade secretary show. Brazil had a small trade deficit with the U.S. in the first eight months of 2018.

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Brazil votes on Sunday. And Brazilian women have a better chance at reshaping its politics than ever before. Washington Post (Estados Unidos) With just one week to go before Brazil’s Oct. 7 presidential elections, up to 10 percent of the country’s male voters remain undecided — and roughly 19 percent of female voters. Many voters and observers, both inside and outside Brazil, are worried about the current front-runner, far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who is expected to win enough votes to compete in the runoff slated for Oct. 28 — and women may be key to preventing his election. But Brazilian women matter in many more ways than simply as voters in the presidential election. The federal and state legislatures have 1,626 seats up for grabs on Oct. 7 as well — and currently, less than 12 percent of those are held by women. Here’s what’s at stake. 1. Brazil has Latin America’s most male-dominated legislature Of the world’s 10 countries with the highest percentages of women in their legislatures, five are in Latin America. That does not include Brazil, ranked at 156 out of 193 countries, where women hold only 11 percent of the seats in Brazil’s lower house of parliament. Why? Cross-national studies suggest the barriers include traditional gender norms that consider women out of place in public life; racial and gendered inequities in such key political resources as time, money, and informal networks; electoral rules; and parties. Those interwoven factors, together with formal and informal rules and norms, produce and sustain a resilient good old boys’ club within formal politics. In Brazil, public opinion favors women in politics. But power remains disproportionately in the hands of white men. And the country’s often weakly organized and male-dominated parties have been unable or unwilling to recruit and support women candidates. 2. Formal rules to mitigate male overrepresentation have done little Brazil has had a gender quota for legislative elections since 1998: Each party’s slate of candidates for the lower house and state assemblies must be at least 30 percent women. But women remain underrepresented. That’s partly because, despite the law, the parties ignore the quota. Between 1998 and 2006, only 16 percent of the parties’ slates competing for the lower house of parliament did in fact include 30 percent women. Even when they 11

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do nominate women, they don’t give them the funds or support they need to win. Percentages were higher during the elections from 2010 to 2018 — on paper at least. But at times, parties have reached those goals formally but fictitiously, running phantom or ghost candidates — women who are not formally running or may not even know their candidacy has been registered. The 2018 congressional contest will be Brazil’s first national and state elections with corporate campaign financing banned, a consequence of a 2015 Supreme Court ruling and new campaign finance laws passed in 2017. In prior lower-house elections, winning candidates on average received about half their funds from corporate sources. To replace corporate donations, last fall Congress created a new electoral fund. The Supreme Electoral Court is requiring parties to allocate 30 percent of their share of the Electoral Fund to women’s campaigns. But parties have been creatively evading that requirement, finding ways to reroute those funds to men. How? They’ve run more than the usual percentage of women for vice president (38.5 percent), vice governor (36.5 percent), and Senate substitute, who will assume office if the elected senator has to step down (27.7 percent). That way, parties can channel the “women’s” funds to tickets headed by men, and still comply with the rule. 3. Women are mobilizing for women’s rights In 2016, Brazil’s overwhelmingly male parliament voted to impeach Dilma Rousseff, the country’s first female president. The impeachment included parliamentarians chanting “Tchau Querida” (Bye, Dear), and a popular sticker that suggested violent sexual acts against her. Rousseff’s impeachment was followed by a government mostly of established white male elites. Rousseff denounced her removal from office as sexist, and feminists throughout the country have joined forces to support her and highlight the ways in which austerity policies and labor law reforms imposed by Rousseff’s successor, Michel Temer, would disproportionately affect women, especially women of color. Two years later, Marielle Franco, a black lesbian municipal councilor from Rio de Janeiro was assassinated on her way home from an event where she spoke about black women’s rights — and her death sparked mass protests throughout the country. Many interpreted her assassination as an attempt to silence and exclude a black queer woman from politics. It may have had the opposite effect, with women — especially women of color — running for office at record levels. Many explicitly say they are doing so to carry out Franco’s legacy.

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Tellingly, women make up 38.8 percent of black candidates and only 30.3 percent of white candidates in this election. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s campaign has catalyzed a broad-based women’s coalition. Almost 3 million women (and counting) with different ideological and partisan leanings have joined a Facebook group called Mulheres Unidas Contra Bolsonaro, or Women United Against Bolsonaro. Although it’s been hacked and one of its group administrators has been attacked on the street, it organized at least 195 events with tens of thousands of women to take to the streets this past weekend to protest his candidacy, and has run an accompanying social media campaign #EleNão (#NotHim). The barriers may be high — but women appear to be in a more serious position to change Brazil’s political culture than they ever have before.

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