Imports

U.S. vineyard operators, dairy farmers and mushroom growers are concerned that they will be the losers in President Bush's move to aid the emerging democracies in Eastern Europe. At issue is whether mushrooms, grape wine and Goya cheese, a hard cheese similar to Parmesan, should be allowed into the United States duty-free under a section of U.S. trade law, the Generalized System of Preferences. Although a proposal to permit the duty-free imports is intended to benefit Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, any of the 130 countries under the GSP program could also ship the products to the United States without paying a tariff.

China and India on Friday lashed out at the possibility of the United States slapping so-called carbon tariffs on goods imported from countries that pollute, even though analysts said proposed U.S. measures were years away and would be hard to implement. "Green" protectionism is likely to cause unease at next week's G-8 meeting in Italy and at a separate 17-member Major Economies Forum gathering. It is also a growing concern in U.N.

The American economy is showing a little more pep in its step, the government reported Friday, but not enough to help bring down high unemployment or put the country on the road to sustained and widespread prosperity. The nation's gross domestic product ? the total value of goods and services produced inside U.S. borders ? grew at a modest annual rate of 2% in the third quarter, up from 1.7% in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said. Even though the United States is at least technically in the process of recovering from the worst recession in decades, the slow growth rate, high unemployment, the devastated housing market and widespread uncertainty over the future have seeded clouds of political resentment that shadow next Tuesday's congressional elections ?

By recent standards, last week's demonstration by 10,000 down-on-their-luck farmers in this central French city was downright peaceful. The farmers, most of them cattle raisers, burned a few old tires--not live British sheep, as some French sheep farmers did recently. Their pistols fired firecrackers, not bullets. They hurled empty wine bottles at some of the several hundred local and national police who dogged their steps, injuring 14 of them before some well-placed tear-gas canisters broke up the crowd.

WASHINGTON - Should U.S. flags that fly from federal buildings be made entirely in the U.S.A.?  So ask sponsors of the All-American Flag Act, introduced in response to the $3.6 million in imports of U.S. flags, mostly from China. The bill's sponsors picked the eve of Independence Day to call on the House to pass a Senate-approved bill that would require the federal government to purchase only flags made entirely from domestic content. "We should do all we can to support American manufacturing and job creation, especially when it comes to our most treasured of patriotic symbols - the American flag," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat whose state of Ohio is home to U.S. flag makers.

U.S. automakers, which have long battled perceptions of poor craftsmanship in their cars, edged out imports in a key benchmark of quality for the first time in nearly a quarter century. Led by improvements at Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co., the domestic industry topped J.D. Power & Associates' latest initial quality study — something that has never happened before in the survey's 24 years. The Toyota brand, a perennial star in the survey, plunged below average as it has struggled with massive recalls.

For all the growth in domestic manufacturing and exports, the ballooning U.S. trade deficit continues to be a thorn in the side of the U.S. economy. The Commerce Department said Thursday that the nation's trade deficit widened to a larger-than-expected $51.8 billion in March, up from $45.4 billion in February. The U.S. posted record exports of $186.8 billion in March, but imports also hit a new monthly high of $238.6 billion. Unlike in recent months, the jump in the deficit wasn't mostly because of higher oil imports.

The European Economic Community said it asked the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to investigate new U.S. rules on wine imports that allow American grape producers to claim injury from subsidized wine imports. The EEC Commission complained that the U.S. regulations violate GATT rules that a company complaining of injuries from imports must produce "a similar product to the one being dumped or subsidized."