The US just lost a trade battle with Mexico

[spanone]

aren't we all tired of winning??????


The US just lost a trade battle with Mexico. It's the first loss of the Trump era.

Mexico and the US have fought for years over tuna. The US insists that any Mexican tuna sold in the US must be "dolphin safe," meaning dolphins weren't killed by tuna fisherman, which was once common. Mexico says its fisherman play by the rules. The US government disagrees.

On Tuesday, the World Trade Organization ruled in Mexico's favor, allowing it to impose trade sanctions worth $163 million a year against the US. The WTO says that's how much money Mexico has lost from the US unfairly penalizing Mexican tuna.

The timing, however coincidental, is sensitive. President Trump wants to renegotiate NAFTA, the free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada.

Trump's administration took its first steps to crack down on trade with Canada on Monday night when the Commerce Department announced a 20% tariff against Canadian softwood lumber. A war of words between Canadian and American leaders has followed.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/25/news/economy/mexico-us-wto-tuna/index.html

[HoneyBadger]

1. Big Tuna

I love it

[unblock]

2. how long before donnie declares the wto "obsolete"?

[MedusaX]

3. He will declare Tunas to be Drug Smuggling Terrorists

And issue an executive order banning all Tuna

Bo reee gard will order ICE to detain & Deport
Charlie Tuna
Along with all the other chickens of the sea....

[erpowers]

4. Are You Tired of Losing Yet?

Donald Trump promised that if he was elected Americans would win so much we might get tired of winning. However, so far all he has done is lose. Is anyone getting tired of losing?

[Demonaut]

5. Why did they rule in favor of Mexico? is there evidence they killed dolphin/porpoises

when catching tuna?

The trade battle/sanctions imposed during which administration?

not sure this is a battle we should have lost

too many questions and not enough answers

[ProudLib72]

6. We were penalizing Mexico

by claiming they were killing dolphins. Those penalties cost them $163 million in exports. Now the WTO is saying that America was wrong; Mexico was not killing dolphins. In order to make up the $163 million in lost revenue, WTO is allowing Mexico to ramp up export tariffs.

Think of it as a libel suit. America libeled Mexico, and now Mexico gets to collect money lost due to that libel.

[JI7]

7. so was it just something we did as a way to help US tuna ?

[ProudLib72]

8. The article doesn't come right out and say it

but that seems to be the most likely explanation. Here is a snippet from further down in the article:

Mexican officials insisted for years that US laws discriminated against their tuna, and that other countries didn't face the same level of enforcement. They argued that they have upheld international standards on commercial fishing and environmental preservation.

[HoneyBadger]

13. There is very little US tuna

It comes from numerous other countries that all have dolphin compliance requirements.

[Demonaut]

9. I understand the context, I would like to see why (evidence) we imposed sanctions

Do we have evidence the Mexican fisheries used unapproved nets, were they letting dolphins drown as they are
competitors for the tuna? too slow to pull in the nets when a dolphin was trapped?

like I said, too many questions

[ProudLib72]

10. Ok, I misunderstood you from your subject line

One interesting bit is that they said they have been penalized since 2008. You're right, though. It does seem a little fishy (pun intended).

[hunter]

11. I don't eat tuna. I stopped about twenty years ago.

We humans are driving some ocean species to extinction, just as we did the passenger pigeon before commercial hunting was banned.

Factory farm chicken is hardly any better from certain ethical perspectives, but chickens are in no danger of extinction. Cheap canned tuna largely replaced canned chicken, thus the "Chicken of the Sea" brand.

http://www.seafoodwatch.org is a good source for people who still want to eat wild-caught fish that are not endangered.

Their tuna recommendations are here:

http://www.seafoodwatch.org/seafood-recommendations/groups/tuna

Many international fishing fleets are notorious for slavery, wage slavery, and very dangerous working conditions. Once you sign onto a fishing boat and it's out at sea there's no escape. The Mexican fishing industry is similar to the Hawaiian fishing industry which doesn't tend to pay non-U.S. citizens even minimum wage. But they won't work you to death and toss your body overboard, or drop you off at the nearest beach if you are injured or ill and unable to work. (North Korea is rumored to be the worst...)

My dad's an avid ocean fisherman. At one point he bought a boat just so he could fish, the proverbial hole in the water you pour money into. Our family's primary source of animal protein when I was a kid was fish my dad caught, and later fish me and my siblings caught with him. My dad's still an avid fisherman. Nevertheless I harbor no fondness for the commercial fishing industry. We should have left that industry behind in the twentieth century. There's simply too many people now and too much pressure on the oceans for commercially caught wild fish to be a common food source. (Much "farmed" seafood is a different environmental horror.)

I'm not a vegetarian like my wife or my daughter-in-law, but I am most days. And even if I was a vegetarian I'd still be a hypocrite if I insisted the same of others because I don't expect our dogs to be vegetarians.

[HoneyBadger]

15. Tuna farming is the future

There are a few startup operations globally. URI in the US is experimenting to see what can be done here. They just built a really big fish tank.

[hunter]

18. The trouble with "farming" carnivorous fish is the feed.

Fish feed is often made from netted wild caught fish and fish guts that humans consider inedible.

Fish ponds built near the ocean destroy coastal habitats, and both pond-raised and net-pen-raised fish are reservoirs of fish diseases and parasites, and, if antibiotics and parasiticides are used favor the evolution of resistant disease organisms. Dense concentrations of fish also pollute the water.

Fish farming can be done with fewer environmental impacts using vegetarian fish species, or possibly carnivorous species fed vegetable and insect proteins, in inland ponds with water inlets carefully designed not to draw up natural water life and with comprehensive treatment of the pond outlet water.

But that's not the way things are done in most of the world. Mangrove forests are ripped up, natural wetlands are diked, and fish or shrimp are fed the least expensive wild-caught fish proteins available. Wastewater from the ponds is dumped directly into the ocean or rivers without treatment.

Seafood farming is an industry that requires heavy regulatory oversight because it's too easy and too profitable to cut corners and do it in a way that's very damaging to the natural environment.

[Kentonio]

12. Well it'll be good practice for losing the next trade dispute with Canada I suppose..

[Vinca]

14. There's that and the 20% more your new house will cost to build. Thanks, Don.

[uponit7771]

19. Red Don ... making Russia Great Again (MRGA ?)

[HoneyBadger]

16. More like the dolphins have lost the trade war with Mexico

Skimming the Wiki, it looks likes Mexico was claiming that it was unfair to effectively embargo non dolphin safe tuna for over a decade. While Mexico won, am thinking that this will apply to all tuna fishing countries. Feel free to correct me.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuna-Dolphin_GATT_Case_(I_and_II)

[HoneyBadger]

17. To paraphrase the old gun control argument

Mexico won by saying that selling their tuna does not kill dolphins, nets kill dolphins, so banning the sale of their tuna is dumb.

I am not sure that this was a loss for Trump.