(Reuters) – Russia plans to support its struggling auto industry with subsidies of up to 271 billion roubles ($8 billion) in the three years to 2016, the government said. Russian car sales fell in 2013 and face another weak year as a stuttering economy puts off buyers, according to lobby group the Association of European Businesses (AEB). The subsidies will be for research and development, to support jobs and to compensate for some costs related to meeting tighter exhaust emission standards, the government said in a statement on its web site.

BEIJING, Jan. 21 (Yonhap) -- China has imposed five-year, anti-dumping duties on imports of South Korean and U.S. solar-grade polysilicon, in what is widely viewed as the latest move to protest its domestic solar industry. The punitive tariffs on imports of South Korean solar materials, announced by China's commerce ministry late Monday, were set between 2.4 percent and 48.7 percent. The ministry also imposed anti-subsidy duties of up to 2.1 percent and anti-dumping duties ranging from 53.3 percent to 57 percent on imports of U.S. solar-grade polysilicon.

Restructuring will continue to be a priority this year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT). Industrial production showed signs of recovery in 2013, with the IIP growing by 5.9% and inventories decreasing. However, the macro-economy did not fully stabilise, consumers continued to budget carefully and free trade agreement negotiations remained unfinished. In addition, natural disasters and diseases posed a continued threat.

In an interview granted to Vietnam News Agency, Truong Dinh Tuyen, advisor to the Vietnamese delegation to the negotiations, said both sides defined the roadmap for concluding the talks and their leaders would release a joint statement to mark the event. According to Tuyen, who was also former Trade Minister, both sides are likely to sign the trade pact during Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s scheduled visit to the EU this October.

The EU and Vietnam today completed the sixth round of negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The talks were held in Brussels from 13-17 January.

The draft of environment chapter of the TPP negotiations has been leaked by Wikileaks on January 15. Download the leaked draft here:Source: WTO center

(Reuters) - An ambitious trade pact being negotiated among Pacific Rim nations could be concluded as soon as April, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said on Friday. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would cover almost 40 percent of the global economy and create a free trade zone reaching from North America to Japan and New Zealand, and the United States is keen to wrap up talks in the coming months. "We could be closing a deal" during the first four months of 2014, Guajardo told reporters in Mexico City.

Taiwan's president, Ma Ying-jeou, has recently turned aggressive in seeking to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks, demanding related government agencies propose concrete policy by July this year, rather than the previous pledge to join the TPP within eight years. National Development Council minister Kuan Chung-ming meanwhile sounded an alert that if Taiwan cannot join the next TPP talks, this will accelerate the country being absorbed into mainland China's economic circle.

Pakistan's Commerce Mi

(VOVworld) – The US has decided to extend antidumping duties on iron pipe fittings and sodium nitrate from China. The decision comes after taxes applied on these two products expired in 2003 and 2008 respectively.