Nafta and Latin American Steel Associations Develop Work Program
10/19/2007 - Representatives of five major NAFTA steel associations met recently with representatives of the Latin American Iron and Steel Association to discuss trade and other policy issues of common concern.
Representatives of five major NAFTA steel associations met recently with representatives of the Latin American Iron and Steel Association (ILAFA) to discuss trade and other policy issues of common concern.
Participating Nafta organizations included the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI): Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA), Specialty Steel Industry of North America (SSINA), Canadian Steel Producers Association (CSPA), and the Mexican Steel Producers Association (CANACERO).
Representing the steel producers of North, Central, and South America, the participating organizations agreed to initiate a common work program that supports rules-based free trade in raw materials, steel and steel-containing goods, as well as the elimination of government subsidies to steel and steel-related industries. The groups also support:
- Market-based competition and private ownership of steel companies everywhere.
- An end to restrictions by governments on direct foreign investment in steel companies.
The work program, as defined by the participating organizations, also encompasses the following additional key points and principles:
- Support for effective national trade laws to counter trade-distorting practices by governments and producers, -- in particular, in non-market economies.
- Concern about ongoing policies and market interventions by governments that have led to excess capacity and injurious surges of exports of steel and steel-containing goods to the Americas.
- Support of communication by keeping one other, as well as the respective governments, informed, where appropriate, regarding bilateral steel policy dialogues with other governments and producers.
- Support for the development of a global sectoral approach to climate change in which all major steel-producing countries, including China and India, contribute to a global solution to the climate-change challenge.
- Promotion of increased cooperation on trade and other policy issues of common concern that are under discussion in the OECD Steel Committee.
- Promotion of ongoing cooperation by meeting at least once a year to review the progress that is being made on these common points and principles.
