A six-year trade dispute between the US and the European Union came to a head on Wednesday, when the Clinton administration slapped 100 percent tariffs on about $520 million worth of European exports to the US (with the notable exceptions of wine and Mercedes Benz cars.) The root of the quarrel is Europe's import rules for bananas, which Washington claims favor bananas from former Caribbean...

Europeans turn up noses over wine deal http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050928/IBWINE28/TPInternational/Americas EU Lawmakers criticize EU-US wine trade deal http://newsfromrussia.com/economics/2005/09/27/63825.html EUROPA: Agriculture: Wine [pdf] http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/markets/wine/facts/index_en.htm EUROPA: Protected Designation of...

This week's In the News examines recent US government designs to sanction $568 million worth of European Union (EU) goods in response to the long-running "Banana Dispute." Trade delegates from the US, Ecuador, Guatamala, Honduras, and Mexico met on January 12, 1999 to ask the World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Body (WTO DSB) to review the EU's new banana import and marketing regime,...

This 58-page study from the National Bureau of Economic Research illustrates "a system of tradable deficit permits as an efficient mechanism for implementing fiscal constraints in the European Monetary Union." Author Alessandra Casella compares her system of deficit permits to the current Stability Pact, finding that her system seems to have more flexibility among the EMU countries, which would...