The International Trade Commission has rescheduled for Nov. 20 a public hearing on trade barriers that U.S. small and medium-sized enterprises perceive as disproportionately affecting their exports to the European Union. This investigation was requested by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in association with the launch of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations, which among other things will seek to enhance the participation of SMEs in trade between the U.S. and the EU. The ITC has also revised other deadlines in this investigation, as follows.

PanARMENIAN.Net - Aluminium producer UC RUSAL has announced that under Judgment dated Nov 5, 2013, the General Court of the European Union upheld the appeal of RUSAL Armenal ZAO (Armenal), a foil-producing subsidiary of UC RUSAL located in Armenia, for annulment of a Council regulation that had imposed an anti-dumping duty on imports of aluminium foil by Armenal into the European Union.

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced Wednesday that it will impose provisional anti-dumping measures on cellulose pulp imported from the United States, Canada and Brazil. The preliminary ruling requires importers of the product to place deposits with Chinese customs ranging from 0.7 percent to 50.9 percent of the imports starting Thursday, depending on the dumping margin, said a MOC statement.

(VOV) - Vietnam and the European Union (EU) kick-started the fifth round of their free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations in Hanoi on November 4.Head of the European Parliamentarian delegation Werner Largen said discussions will focus on the creation of an equal playing field for State and private businesses, intellectual property rights protection, geographical indication, and sustainable development.

China wasn’t happy when it was excluded from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but now that negotiations for the trade agreement led by the United States are set to conclude by year-end, China may be forced to make reforms in response to the potentially polarizing alliance, regardless of whether it plans to join the TPP.

Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Shen Danyang has confirmed that the third round of talks on the proposed tripartite free trade agreement (FTA) between China, Japan and South Korea, will be held on November 26-29, 2013, in Japan. He disclosed that, after further preparatory meetings held between the parties on October 22-23 that mainly covered the framework for discussing market access matters, the three countries agreed to hold the third round of FTA negotiations and expressed the hope that the agreement could be concluded as soon as possible.

PHILIPPINE Laws and regulations are hampering market access for US-made products, industry groups complained in comments solicited by Washington.

Japan notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) Secretariat on October 30, 2013 that it has requested consultations with Ukraine over its safeguard measures on certain passenger cars. In April 2013 Ukraine's Inter-Departmental Commission for International Trade started to levy a 6.46 percent duty on imports of cars with a cylinder capacity of 1,000-1,500cm3, and a 12.95 percent duty on imports of cars with a cylinder capacity of 1,500-2,200cm3.

Nov 4 (Reuters) - The Faroe islands launched a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization on Monday to challenge a European Union ban on imports of Faroese herring and mackerel and restrictions on Faroese vessels entering EU ports. "The measures implemented by the EU are in clear contravention of basic provisions of the WTO Agreement," the office of Faroese Prime Minister Kaj Leo Holm Johannesen said in a statement.

Citing the complexity of the cases, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced on October 31st, 2013 that it will extend its anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations of solar-grade polysilicon imports from the EU for another six months. MOFCOM began its anti-dumping investigation on November 1st, 2012, with a one-year deadline to complete the investigation but a provision for the six-month extension.