A senior Chinese trade official on Thursday called for the integration of free trade agreements in East Asia, while experts called for an acceleration of domestic reforms geared toward a market-oriented economy to facilitate the establishment of trade pacts. Yu Jianhua, China's deputy international trade negotiator at the Ministry of Commerce, said at a FTA forum held in Qingdao on Thursday, "the ideal picture, we believe, is the opening-up of different FTAs to form a common, and highly effective free trade zone."

(Reuters) - The European Union is willing to deepen trade ties with China but wants to see concessions from Beijing first, documents seen by Reuters on Tuesday showed. At the same time as EU regulators are ramping up trade pressure on Beijing by threatening duties on solar panels and telecoms equipment, Brussels is dangling the carrot of trade agreements before the Chinese.

WASHINGTON, June 20 (Reuters) - U.S. efforts to forge a "21st Century" trade agreement with Vietnam and 10 other countries in the Asia Pacific region are running into problems mired in the past, including a textile trade policy that U.S. industry does not want to give up. The United States hopes to finish talks on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact by the end of the year, but Vietnam says the sides are nowhere close on its biggest priority: market access for its clothing and footwear exports.

Talks on a trade deal between the U.S. and the European Union, which could be the biggest bilateral deal ever, will begin in Washington next month. “We intend to move forward fast,” European Commission President Jose Barroso told reporters today at the start of the Group of Eight summit in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland. He was standing alongside President Barack Obama, EU President Herman Van Rompuy and their host, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron.

SYDNEY, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Some leading political economists have lauded China's renewed interest in the controversial Trans- Pacific Partnership (TPP), telling Xinhua that China would enjoy more leverage on the tenor of negotiations "from the inside."

The ongoing negotiations between the European Union and Canada for a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) to take their trade and investment relationship to a new level are now in their final phase, according to a press release issued on Monday.

(Reuters) - The United States, in the first report on Russia's compliance with its World Trade Organization commitments, said on Wednesday it was closely watching Moscow for any violations that thwart U.S. exports to the world's sixth-largest economy. But in the report required by Congress, the U.S. Trade Representative's Office did not announce any definite plans for litigation at the Geneva-based world trade body.

Vietnamese enterprises will enjoy many benefits from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) between 10 ASEAN nations and six partners, namely Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, Japanese experts said. 

It has been announced that the European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht and Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng are to meet in Beijing on June 21, during the 27th annual EU-China Joint Committee, to discuss the currently difficult trade relations between the European Union (EU) and China.

Unwilling to agree with the European Union's proposal to allow further tariff cuts under the proposed India-EU Bilateral Trade And Investment Agreement (BITA), India may ask the 27-nation trading block sign a free trade deal "within a narrow political window", an online media report says today.