(Reuters) - India's trade minister on Tuesday accused the United States of excessive trade protectionism, launching a broadside that coincided with the visit of a top U.S. official to patch up a stormy bilateral friendship. Trade friction between the two countries has increased ahead of a general election in India, amid lingering tension over the recent arrest and strip search of a female diplomat in New York suspected of visa fraud.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says Japan will not set a deadline for concluding the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks. He says placing a time limit on negotiations could hurt Japan. Abe spoke at a Lower House budget committee on Thursday, after TPP ministerial talks in Singapore ended without a date for the next round of discussions. Abe said the talks are in their final stage and the direction they are taking is becoming clear.

India has emerged as the largest exporter of shrimp  to the US market, for the first time in the history of seafood trade, in 2013. Overtaking Thailand, India had shipped 94,000 tones of shrimp to USA valued at US $1 billion. Roughly 50% of India’s total shrimp export was to USA. Now India became eighth largest exporter of food items, including Spices and Seafood, to the United States.

Asserting that the U.S. “cannot afford to stand on the sidelines of trade,” U.S. Vice President Joe Biden penned an op-ed in the Financial Times  on Thursday laying out the economic and strategic case for the Obama Administration’s current trade agenda. His comments are part of a larger effort happening in public and behind the scenes as the Administration pushes for the conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in the face of opposition from its own party.

(Reuters) - A standoff between the United States and Japan is holding up talks on a sweeping Pacific free trade pact and a lack of authority to push an eventual deal through the U.S. Congress without amendment may be undercutting Washington's hand. After weekend talks in Singapore, including two separate sessions between Japan and the United States, Japanese Economics Minister Akira Amari said "considerable gaps" remained with the United States on bread-and-butter issues like farm tariffs.

OTTAWA--Canada should find out in June if it's been successful in a long-running dispute over a contentious U.S. meat-labeling rule. A World Trade Organization panel is expected to issue a confidential interim report to the governments on June 20, according to a person familiar with the matter. The final report is expected a month later, on July 22, according to this person, who has seen the timelines for the decision. The panel heard oral submissions from the governments last week in the dispute over country-of-origin labeling, known as COOL.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. trade panel voted Friday to extend antidumping and countervailing duties on laminated woven sacks from China after the first five-year review of the measures imposed initially in 2008. The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) voted against revoking the existing duty orders on laminated woven sacks from China, saying it "would be likely to lead to continuation or recurrence of material injury within a reasonably foreseeable time. "

PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry has suggested the government not to impose anti-dumping duty on mports of Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA) into India in view of its demand supply mismatch, which according to latest estimates stands at 4,096,952 MT against 3,420,000 MT.

NEW DELHI: India has imposed a safeguard duty on import of a chemical used by pharmaceutical and dye industries for 15 months to protect domestic producers.  The Finance Ministry imposed the safeguard duty on Sodium Nitrite (the chemical) following recommendation for the same by the Directorate General of Safeguards (DGS).  Safeguard duty is a WTO-compatible temporary measure that is brought in for a certain time-frame to avert any damage to a country's domestic industry from cheap imports. 

The Latin American economic bloc Mercosur has nearly concluded a free trade agreement with the European Union (EU), Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on February 24.