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United States proposed a Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) with a goal of reaching a deal by year-end. The U.S. aims to discuss the trade deal with other nations during the World Trade Organization meeting. The TPP talks aim to establish a free-trade bloc that covers 800 million people, a third of world trade and accounting for 40 percent of the global economy. The goal is to promote remove trade protectionisms and also set standard for workers' rights, environmental protection and intellectual property rights. This article can be related to our topic this week as it involves trade protectionism. This TTP deal argues against protectionism measures as they believe the removal of protectionism will promote growth. For instance, Obama believes that more export will provide more U.S. jobs. On the other hand, opponents against the deal state that the deal will only provide multinational corporations powers against national policies in the name of free trade.

Although this article focuses on protectionism, in my opinion trade barriers come along. The WTO has lately noticed of an economic and trade slowdown because ofprotectionism, the global trade growth is estimated to decline from 5% to 4.5% next year which is alarming due to the fact the world's economy needs to recover. The article also talks about how trade protectionism is becoming more difficult to fight because it is difficult to fight because of the complexity and because its coming in different ways that we are not used to (for example:tariffs and export subsidies), and more and more regulations are being imposed each day.

As my fellow peer said this article is a perfect example of why protection policies shouldnt be used in some cases. The article states that due to trade protectionism policies the estimated anual growth will decrease from 5% do 4.5%! What should really happen is that countries should decrease their protectionism policies, let the economy gain a bit a stamina,in order to recover from the recesion, and only then increase protectionism once the economy has recovered and is growing.

This article deals with the new resolution that has been passed by the EU government demanding that the free trade pact with the US be under discussion. This is to safeguard the movie industries and online media of countries like France against foreign competition. With the influence of American culture and Hollywood films in every country around the world, the EU is determined to maintain its own culture and industries. This is a good example of how countries set up trade barriers to protect their own local industries against powerful international competition.

This article talks about the negotiations between China and the EU. The concern of the two countries is about the Chinese exports of solar panels to the EU. The representatives of the EU consider the Chinese exports of solar panels as dumping, because of the lowered costs.To prevent the uncompetitiveness of other producers, the EU had to set tariffs of nearly 50 percent on Chinese solar panel shipments. That caused a discontentment from Chinese side, because the exports of solar panels is one of the largest categories of Chinese exports and worth about $27 billion a year.

This is a perfect example of how protectionism policies are put to effect. This article talks about how protectionism policies in the EU have to increase in order to protect the fragile recovering economies. It states that there were about 150 new protectionism policies introduced last year nad 18 measures have been dismantilled. "All of us need to stick to our pledge to fight back against protectionism. It is worrisome to see so many restrictive measures still being adopted and virtually none abolished," said EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht. Trade protectionism was also an important point raised in the G20 Summit taking place in Saint Petersburg on 5 and 6 September 2013.

Here we have a great article about protectionism and export subsidies in China. Export subsidies are often used by governments to increase exports. Export subsidies have the opposite effect of export tariffs because exporters get payment, which is a percentage or proportion of the value of exported. Export subsidies increase the amount of trade, and in a country with floating exchange rates, have effects similar to import subsidies. If China continues with high export subsidies they will probably invite retaliatory actions by foreign governments what reduces the benefits that can be gained from international trade by all consumers and producers in all countries

Russian president Vladimir Putin has decided to impose protectionist policies to protect domestic markets. This decision came as a retaliatory tactic against other members of the WTO who Putin claims to be making international trade "hidden and subtle." In fact, the Russian president used the EU as an example as he claims that the EU's decision to split the gas companies and gas distribution companies are an attack on Russia's domestic suppliers.

Here we see a very recent announcement made by President Putin which has many other members of the WTO concerned, although it is stated explicitly that all the policies they plan to implement will be in line with WTO regulations.

South Korea has been accused of dumping its washing machines by the United States. This is in response to a complaint by an American manufacturer "Whirlpool" who has voiced for a tariff to protect its products. South Korea is to appeal to the World Trade Organization. the chief aim of Korea's complaint is in the way in which the US calculates dumping.

The japanese government has started to consider removing tariffs from imported wine. This would mean other negotiatiors in the Trans-Pacific Partnership would also have to consider scrapping the tariffs on wine. The government believes that removing tariffs would greatly benefit the domestic consumers while also increasing sale exports from Japan. It will be interesting to see what Japan decides to do as it will have a great effect on the Japanese economy.