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Cat’s Strategy to Offset Slumping Global Sales

Cat’s Strategy to Offset Slumping Global Sales

Peoria, IL – Construction and mining equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. is looking to offset a major decline in its overseas sales with a new strategy aimed at steeping up the marketing of remanufactured equipment, particularly in developing markets where both tariff and non-tariff trade barriers exist.

Overall, the company saw its global machinery sales decline by almost 10 percent during the three months ending in July with the greatest drop coming in Asia, where sales dropped 30 percent in both May and June, the company reported.

Construction sales for the period were down by 16 percent in China and by 14 percent in Latin America, it said.

But, the company has developed a new strategy to beef-up its sagging global business revenues by 20 percent by 2020, compared to a 2013 baseline.

According to its 2013 Sustainability Report, Caterpillar commonly faces a particular type of non-tariff barrier when remanufactured goods are classified as used goods, which cannot be imported under any circumstance or can only be imported after complying with special inspection, certification, or licensing regulations.

The tariff barriers it also faces, the report said, usually hinge on the excessive fees or taxes levied by some countries that significantly increase their customer’s cost of choosing a viable remanufactured product.

Both types of trade barriers most often come into play when customers seek to export their core parts and return them to Caterpillar in exchange for a remanufactured engine or component.

The company argues that as all of its remanufactured products carry the same durability, performance, quality and warranty equal to that of a new component, they should be treated as such.

That’s the line that Caterpillar management is reportedly taking with policymakers, government regulators and customs officials in several countries in an effort to open up their markets and expand remanufacturing options for the company’s customers.

To help it meet its 2020 growth goal, the company has developed a ‘job site efficiency’ (JSS) initiative “to help customers capture maximum value from their assets by improving on-site performance and sustainability,” particularly in the agricultural sector which now accounts for approximately 15 percent of Caterpillar’s total JSS volume.

According to the company, the results have been “significant.” On average, it said, agricultural customers have been able to reduce idle machinery times by 20 percent, and so-called “operator-caused events,” such as equipment wear and tear and safety issues, by 25 percent.

09/03/2014

Economist: India ‘Scuttles’ WTO Trade Talks

Los Angeles, CA – India “has apparently chosen to scuttle the ‘good ship’ WTO-Bali, the first truly multilateral agreement achieved since the founding of the WTO in 1995,” says Dr. Kent Jones, professor of economics at Babson College in Massachusetts.

“This is not the only ship in the WTO fleet, but it is the only one of its kind that has been successfully floated under its multilateral negotiating mandate. It is now taking on water, thereby endangering the entire multilateral trading system,” says Jones, a published author and an acknowledged expert on trade and policy issues who served as a senior economist for trade policy at the US State Department.

India, said Jones, “agreed last December to accept a deal in Bali that combined new rules on trade facilitation with a 2017 timeline on reconciling WTO agricultural rules with India’s food security policies.”

Trade facilitation provisions, he said, “would combine reductions in red tape and improvements in customs logistics with aid for developing countries’ trade infrastructure. The lion’s share of economic welfare gains, estimated at $1 trillion, would flow to developing countries, most of which are not amused at India’s decision to renege on the deal at the last minute.”

India’s system of food subsidies and stockpiling, Jones asserts, “currently runs afoul of WTO agricultural rules, but beyond that requires a wasteful domestic bureaucracy and market distortions that cannot help the poor in a sustainable manner. In addition, it cannot improve agricultural productivity, which is what is really needed for a lasting solution to its food security problem.”

Nonetheless, he adds, “the Bali deal set a moratorium on challenges to such policies until 2017, by which time negotiations on reforming the rules could take place. In the interim, alternatives and compromises could be considered that could allow India’s food security policies to coexist with WTO rules for global markets.”

The new government “feels that this timeline is not good enough, and hopes to hold the globally popular trade facilitation deal hostage in order to force a global agricultural deal immediately that will make its current policy legal under WTO rules. India professes to support trade facilitation, which only lays bare its cynical strategy to renege on its earlier commitments and blame everyone else for failing to re-negotiate,” Jones says.

“DESTRUCTIVE BRINKMANSHIP”

India’s “strategy of brinkmanship appears not only destructive to the WTO’s credibility as a negotiating forum, but to India’s global interests as well. Most major trading countries are so furious at India for breaking its word at Bali that many are planning to implement trade facilitation outside the regular WTO framework, through bilateral, regional or ‘pluritaleral’ agreements,” he says. “Global WTO agreements are the best way to expand trade, but countries have already shown that they will strike their own deals if WTO negotiations break down.”

According to Jones, “These initiatives outside the WTO would deprive India of any leverage in pursuing agricultural rules reform in its favor, while forfeiting its potential leadership role among developing and emerging economies. Brazil and China, in particular, reportedly criticized India’s veto.”

Without a deal forged in Bali, the “peace clause” preventing disputes against India’s agricultural policies would be suspended, which could lead to trade sanctions. India’s export industries would also suffer from abandoning the WTO negotiations. It stands to lose a lot from this misadventure,” he asserts.

“Indian trade diplomats insist that they have presented viable compromise measures that could lead to a new deal in September,” says Jones.

“Diplomats can always walk back from the brink, but it seems clear that there will be no fundamental renegotiation of what was agreed in Bali last December. By throwing rocks in its own harbors, India’s economy will remain tethered to a costly protectionist regime, while the rest of the world will seek other shores—and negotiating venues.”

08/07/2014

WTO Slams China for Lack of Trade Transparency

Los Angeles, CA – China is coming under harsh criticism from the World Trade Organization with members of the 160-nation body asserting that Beijing has failed to live up to key transparency commitments it made when it joined the organization in 2001.

The WTO Secretariat recently released the results of a critical 200-page report on China’s trade policy which concluded that, over the past two years, the country continues to exhibit a lack of clarity, organization and centralization of its trade rules and regulations.

EU ambassador Angelos Pangratis described the lack of clarity on trade issues as “striking,” while Canada’s representative also criticized the “often vague and insufficent information available” from Beijing.

Release of the report came during the WTO’s recent, bi-annual policy review held at the group’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Many of the 50 WTO members who took part in the review also criticized Beijing’s use of export restraints and taxes, restrictions on foreign investments and said it must improve protection for intellectual property rights (IPR).

The US Representative to the WTO, Christopher Wilson, said that China’s “apparently retaliatory conduct” in its use of duties, and said the country appeared to ignore a number of WTO findings against it.”

Wilson added, “An enormous amount of work remains if China is to close significant loopholes in its legal framework and reduce the unacceptably high IPR infringement levels.”

Responding to the WTO report, China’s Assistant Minister of Commerce, Wang Shouwen said its findings were “baseless” and that China “has one of the best track records of implementing WTO rulings.”

But, he added, though China “has made great strides to address these issues…it has pledged to do more to improve transparency.”

07/30/2014