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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.

This is an article of interest because it hits on a variety of things that we have and are continuing to study: import tariffs, the WTO, global trading in general, and the effects that each nation's actions have on one another.

This article raises awerness of the potencial risks that protectionism polices, import tariffs in this case, might have on the economy. If the WTO talks fail and Ukraine increases import tariffs it could have huge consequences with its trading partners as the local firms of the trading partners will suffer heavy losses, potencially leading to that specific export sector closing, which in time would effect the economic growth of the exporting country/countries. That is why there always has to be a balance with protectionism policies, iit must both benefit the importer and exporter

This article talks about how members of the WTO have a possitive view towards Japan because they didnt apply protectionism policies even though their situation was critical at a certain point. Japan would have not been able to go through all the issues that have affected the country in the past few years if it wasn't for taking the right decissions. In order to boost up the economy, and local producers the government did not intervene so there would still be competition from international producers thus encouraging local producers to work hard to improve the quality of their goods and recover as quick as possible from the natural and economical catastrophes the country has gone through.

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.

It is an article about fish trade between South Korea and Japan. The korean government want to ban the import of fish from Japan because they are afraid of the radioactive water leaks from the Fukushima reactor. This ban on the the fish import from Japan will have an important effect on consumers from Korea because Korean consumers will have a smaller choice of fish to buy and the prices from the local producers may be higher. It will also have effect on the Japanese market because the demand for fishes will decrease and Japanese producers will be probably forced to reduce the production.

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.

China, the world's top wheat and rice consumer, will issue the same tariff import quotas for grains and cottons in the year 2014 as they did in 2013. The wheat import quotas are at 9.6 million tones, corn at 7.2 million tones, rice at 5.3 million tones, and cotton at 894,000 tones. The low tariff-rate is 1 percent while grains imported without the quota allocation would be charged a 65 percent import duty.The tariff import quotas is imposed in the hope to help chinese farmers and to also levy high import duties on agriculture products. However, due to its agreement with World Trade Organization, China is still obliged to allow imports with lower duties. This article clearly connects to the topic of protectionism. Here, the Chinese government hopes to help its domestic agriculture industry by limiting imports. This imposition of quotas will lower the imports which would increase the amount of local production, therefore increasing more revenue for the domestic producers. Here, we can also see the role of WTO arranging trade among countries. Here the obligations create equality between China market and its import countries.

WHEN the financial crisis hit, the G20, grouping together countries that produce more than 85% of the world's GDP, made all the right noises about trade. World leaders were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s, when protectionism led to economic disaster; and their apparent success in ensuring that global markets stayed open has been a rare glimmer of light in the economic gloom. Yet even this optimism may be misplaced. As a report from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) warns this week, the barriers are creeping back up.

The trading bloc presents in the article is the ASEAN trading bloc, which includes 10 nations. India and ASEAN are negotiating on a free trade agreement on services and investments. However, some nations of the ASEAN have not agreed on the agreement. The agreement, if implemented, will help boost movement of Indian professionals in the ASEAN region and it will increase more investments in services sector. This article is a great example of a trading bloc and how nations that are a part of the trading bloc must agree on an agreements. Here, India is not negotiating with all 10 nations instead of just one. Combining all nations help strengthen all nations economically.