SEOUL, June 25 (Xinhua) -- South Korea and China will hold the sixth round of talks for a bilateral free trade deal early next month, Seoul's trade ministry said Tuesday. The new round of negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) between Seoul and Beijing will be held for three days through July 4 at South Korea's largest port city of Busan, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

Following discussions on June 21 at the annual joint committee in Beijing, which was co-chaired by the European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht and the Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng, it appears that both sides intend to resolve the currently difficult trade relations between the European Union (EU) and China by negotiation. The major difficulty in EU-China trade relations has arisen from the provisional anti-dumping duties imposed by the European Commission earlier this month on around EUR21bn (USD27.6bn) of Chinese exports of solar products to the EU.

American companies doing businesses in ASEAN have strongly urged the US government to conclude Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations with ASEAN by late 2013 in an effort to strengthen its presence in the world's fastest growing region in what seemed to be a race against China whose Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) initiative, which is seen moving quicker in ASEAN than TPP.

TOKYO, Japan and the European Union (EU) began, here on Monday, the second round of negotiations on a bilateral free-trade pact aimed at stimulating economies on both sides. At the meetings through July 3, the two sides are expected to discuss such areas as trade in goods and services, investment, intellectual property rights, non-tariff measures, government procurement, and other trade-related issues, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said.

Ministers from the Member States of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) — Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland — and from Costa Rica and Panama have signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) today. The FTA will further enhance the economic ties and promote trade and investment between the two sides.

There has been a surge of interest in the conclusion of mega-regional trade deals in the past few years. The United States, as part of its pivot to Asia strategy, pressed ahead with serious negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in 2011 at the APEC Summit in Honolulu.

The first round of negotiations to establish the Asian Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) — a free trade agreement (FTA) across ASEAN+6 (the 10 ASEAN members plus Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, India, and New Zealand) — was held in Brunei in May.

SEOUL, KOREA – The South Korea-EU FTA turned out to have propped up Korea’s exports to the EU in the midst of the global economic slowdown. According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE), Korea’s exports to the EU from July 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013 slid 6.5% y-o-y to USD 43.7 billion. With the European economy in the doldrums, the EU’s demand for Korean products flagged. In particular, the South Korean shipbuilding sector was hit the hardest, witnessing its exports to the EU tumbling 29.7% during the same period.

With Japan set to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations as early as July, its ambassador to Canada has acknowledged there could be implications for the ongoing bilateral trade deal his country is negotiating with Canada — he’s just not sure what they are yet.  

(Reuters) - New U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman on Friday said he expected growing trade problems with India to be a major early focus of his tenure, but stopped short of saying the United States should cut off benefits for that country. "We have a number of concerns about the investment and innovation environment in India," Froman said in a wide-ranging interview shortly after being sworn into office. "It's something that we're very focused on."