June 5 (Reuters) – Top trade officials from the Asia-Pacific
region said on Tuesday they hoped to agree by September on a
list of environmentally friendly products that would be targeted
for tariff cuts over the next three years.
“We reaffirm our commitment to promote trade and investment
in environmental goods and services (EGS) in order to address
environmental challenges,” trade ministers from the 21 members
of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum said in a
statement issued at their annual meeting in Kazan, Russia.
President Barack Obama and other APEC leaders agreed last
November to cut tariffs on certain environmentally friendly
goods to 5 percent or less by the end of 2015, and pledged to
decide on the list of products by this year’s leaders’ summit
meeting in September in Vladivostok.
The United States has proposed cutting tariffs on solar
panels, water and wind turbines, water treatment pumps, waste
incinerators, deep discharge batteries and other products to
spur trade and reduce the cost of environmentally friendly
technologies.
Thirteen other APEC economies have also provided lists of
proposed products, but China has not, a spokeswoman for the U.S.
Trade Representative’s office said.
Meanwhile, China and the United States recently have been at
loggerheads over clean energy trade.
In May, Washington slapped preliminary “anti-dumping” duties
ranging from roughly 30 percent to 250 percent on billions of
dollars of Chinese-made solar panels to offset what the U.S.
Commerce Department said was unfairly low pricing by Chinese
producers and exporters.
The United States also set preliminary “countervailing”, or
anti-subsidy, duties ranging from about 14 percent to 26 percent
on more wind turbine tower imports from China, which totaled
about $222 million in 2011.
China has accused the United States of taking “protectionist
measures” to protect its clean energy sector.
(Reporting By Doug Palmer; Editing by Paul Simao)
