WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Tuesday said he was creating an enforcement unit to crack down on unfair trade practices in China and other countries and would beef up border inspections to block imports of counterfeit goods.

“I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products. And I will not stand by when our competitors don’t play by the rules,” Obama said in his annual State of the Union speech.

The White House said the new enforcement team would bring together resources and investigators from across the federal government to go after unfair foreign trade practices.

Obama said his administration had already brought trade cases against China “at nearly twice the rate as the last administration … But we need to do more. It’s not right when another country lets our movies, music, and software be pirated. It’s not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours only because they’re heavily subsidized.”

Republicans vying to take on Obama in this year’s presidential race have slammed his handling of China. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has promised a tougher approach, begin with labeling China a currency manipulator.

The U.S. trade deficit with China is expected to hit a new record high of about $300 billion in 2011 when figures are released next month.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office has filed five World Trade Organization cases against China since Obama took office in January 2009, compared to seven during the two terms of former President George W. Bush. China joined the WTO in December 2001.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A coalition of over 80 U.S. business groups on Tuesday raised concerns about President Barack Obama’s plan to create a new department of trade by consolidating the relatively small office of the U.S. Trade Representative with five other agencies.

“We believe that such a move will weaken the ability of USTR and the United States to pursue effectively a strong trade policy that is responsive to Congress, business and other stakeholders,” the groups said in a letter to Obama hours before his annual State of the Union speech.

Obama rolled out his proposal for modernizing U.S. government efforts to promote exports just two weeks ago.

He wants to combine USTR with five other trade agencies spread across Washington, including key parts of the Commerce Department, the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Small Business Administration.

It received mixed reviews in Congress, with those lawmakers most directly involved in trade expressing concern that USTR could lose effectiveness if made part of a larger department.

USTR, which has a staff of less than 250 people, was created as separate government agency in 1962 and then expanded by Congress in 1974. Its primary responsibilities are negotiating and enforcing trade agreements and resolving trade disputes.

Its head, currently U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, reports directly to the president as a member of his cabinet.

WASHINGTON/OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada and the United States extended a bilateral softwood lumber deal by two years to 2015 on Monday, underlining the two nations’ close trade ties despite recent disagreements over an oil pipeline.

“This extension agreement will bring much-needed stability and predictability to the lumber industry,” Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast told reporters after a meeting in Washington with U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

Washington and Ottawa signed the initial seven-year deal in 2006 in a bid to end prolonged legal fights. Producers in the United States have complained for decades that Canada unfairly subsidizes its lumber companies.

In recent years, the U.S. housing downturn and the lingering effects of the global financial crisis have created hard times for North American lumber producers.

Kirk, in a separate statement, said continuing the pact was important, “particularly when both sides of the border are facing weak demand.”

The extension was signed less than a week after President Barack Obama’s administration irritated Canada by vetoing a proposed pipeline that would have carried crude from Alberta’s oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Fast declined to tell reporters whether he discussed the issue with Kirk but said he was optimistic the deal would eventually be approved.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk on Friday downplayed chances that Congress would move this year to approve President Barack Obama’s sweeping plan to reorganize U.S. trade agencies, but said he strongly backed the idea.

“I am a hundred percent supportive of the president’s objective to rationalize our capabilities and our mission with the realities of where our economy is,” Kirk told reporters in his first public comments on the proposal outlined by the White House last week.

Obama wants to consolidate USTR and five other trade and business agencies into a single export body to help the United States better compete in a 21st century economy and to modernize a government he said has grown too complex.

Kirk, when asked if he thought Congress was likely to give Obama the power to carry out the plan, paused, broke into a broad smile and laughed before replying.

“You know, look, this is one of those things that I think most Americans if they are just sitting around their kitchen table would think is a non-brainer. But we’re in Washington, we’re in an election year,” Kirk said.

Key members of Congress – including the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee – have raised concern with the plan.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp said they feared taking USTR and “making it just another corner of a new bureaucratic behemoth would hurt American exports and hinder American job creation.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Commerce Department said on Thursday it was launching an investigation that could lead to steep import duties on more than $100 million worth of wind energy towers from China and Vietnam.

The decision adds to the friction in clean energy trade between the world’s two largest economies.

The Commerce Department is already investigating charges that Chinese solar panel manufacturers engage in unfair trade practices and will issue a preliminary decision on duties next month.

The Wind Tower Trade Coalition, a group of U.S. producers, had previously said it was asking for anti-dumping duties of 64 percent on imports from China and 59 percent from Vietnam .

But in its announcement, the department said China was alleged to undercut U.S. wind tower prices by 213.54 percent and Vietnam by 140.54 to 143.29 percent.

U.S. producers also want additional countervailing duties on wind towers from China to offset alleged government subsidies, despite a recent U.S. court ruling that struck down the use of such duties against “non-market economies” like China.

A separate U.S. government agency, the International Trade Commission, held a hearing on Thursday to probe whether U.S. companies have been materially harmed or threatened by the imports. The panel will vote next month on whether there is enough evidence of harm for the case to proceed.

WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (Reuters) – The United States on Wednesday urged the Philippines to swiftly open its market to U.S. alcohol products like Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam by eliminating a discriminatory tax system struck down by the World Trade Organization.

“This is an important victory for American distilled spirits producers and workers … We urge the Philippine government to comply quickly,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement after a WTO appellate body ruling. The United States and the European Union, in separate cases filed several years ago at the WTO, complained the Philippines had violated global trade rules by taxing foreign alcoholic beverages at rates 10 to 40 times higher than brands made in the Philippines from home-grown materials such as cane and palm sugar. Global trade rules generally bar countries from discriminating against imported products in their tax regimes. The EU and United States are the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 exporters of distilled spirits, but have been all but shut out of the Philippines, one of the largest markets for alcohol in the Asia-Pacific region. A WTO dispute settlement panel sided with the transatlantic trade partners in August and the WTO appellate body upheld the decision on Wednesday. The Philippines now has 30 days to say how it plans to comply with the ruling, a U.S. official said. The victory is expected to help U.S. producers like Brown-Forman (BFb.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Beam Inc (BEAM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) break into the $3.4 billion Philippines spirits market. Brown-Forman, based in Louisville, Kentucky, owns the Jack Daniel’s brand, and Beam, headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, produces Jim Beam whiskey.

Peter Cressy, president of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, urged the Philippines to put in place “a fair, non-discriminatory excise tax system.”

He called the current tax regime “is a textbook case of discrimination against imported products.”

(Reporting By Doug Palmer; Editing by Eric Walsh)

((doug.palmer@thomsonreuters.com)(202 898 8341)) Keywords: USA PHILIPPINES/ALCOHOL

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A coalition that says it represents 97 percent of the U.S. solar industry on Tuesday urged solar panel maker SolarWorld to withdraw a petition asking President Barack Obama’s administration to slap punitive duties on China for unfair trading practices.

“The severe tariffs SolarWorld seeks would have a very damaging effect on the solar industry in the United States and would fundamentally undermine many years of effort by all of us who care about the future of solar power,” the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE) said in a letter to SolarWorld President Gordon Brinser.

“In simple dollar terms, your petition threatens the planned installation of solar electric power systems in the amount of $11 billion in 2012 and the potential installation of $60 billion currently in the total pipeline,” the group said in the letter signed by CASE President Jigar Shah.

Shah, who founded the solar services company SunEdison, argued that a 40-percent drop in solar panel prices between 2006 and 2011 has helped spur an eight-fold increase in demand for solar energy over the same period.

“By asking government to interfere and artificially increase the price (equivalent to putting on a high tax) will only hinder the deployment, cost thousands of jobs, reduce our energy security and further negatively impact an already shaky economy,” Shah said in CASE’s letter.

Brinser, in an emailed statement, dismissed the letter “as inappropriate bluster from Jigar Shah, who speaks on behalf of the Chinese manufacturers. Mr. Shah and these Chinese manufactures are well aware that their illegal trade practices are harming the U.S. economy and causing thousands of good manufacturing jobs to be lost.”

CASE said its 145 member companies employ over 14,000 solar professionals across every major region and in more than two dozen states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, North Carolina, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk on Monday welcomed Japan’s decision to review its ban on certain cuts of beef from the United States as a sign of Tokyo’s interest in joining talks on an Asia Pacific free trade pact.

“I welcome this important step which puts us on a path to address the long-standing issue of beef trade with the United States,” Kirk said in a statement after meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba.

Kirk said he urged Japan to further open its market to U.S. beef exports as quickly as possible.

He said he told Gemba that Tokyo must be prepared to tackle a number of other trade barriers if it wants to join talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Those negotiations now include the United States and eight other countries.

Japan currently bans imports of U.S. beef from cattle older than 20 months, as a result of several cases of mad cow disease found in the U.S. cattle herd about eight years ago.

The United States says it has addressed the threat posed by those cases and that all of its beef now meets international safety standards regardless of the age of the cow.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat whose committee has jurisdiction over trade agreements in Congress, Japan’s decision to reassess the risk of importing beef from older U.S. cattle was long overdue.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Commerce Secretary John Bryson urged corporate America on Thursday to open its pocketbook and start making the investments necessary to put millions of Americans back to work.

“Having run a large business, I understand that if you’ve got cash available, it can be tempting to sit on it,” the former chief executive of Edison International, a California utility, said in a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But “consumer demand will never rebound until more Americans have good jobs. The kind of jobs that build the skills that will let them keep learning – and earning – for a lifetime,” Bryson said.

In his first major speech since becoming commerce secretary in October, Bryson acknowledged there were plenty of reasons for companies to be cautious with funds, ranging from economic turmoil in Europe to “dysfunction in Washington.”

But at a time when protesters in cities across the country are denouncing “corporate agreed,” Bryson appealed to both the companies’ patriotism and pragmatism.

“America needs you to put people back to work. … The second compelling reason for businesses to act boldly on jobs and investment is because that’s what our economic competitors around the world are doing,” he said.

Companies in China, Brazil and India are part of “the same troubled global economy, but they’re not backing down.”

BEIJING/ WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China will impose punitive duties of up to 22 percent on large cars and SUVs exported from the United States , China’s Commerce Ministry said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of trade disputes between the world’s two largest economies.

The new duties take aim at vehicles including the Cadillac SRX made by General Motors Co, Jeeps from Chrysler Group and the U.S.-made BMW X3, all of which China said were being dumped on the Chinese market and causing “substantial damage to China’s domestic industry.”

China’s action comes at an awkward time for U.S.-China relations, with China’s currency and trade policies becoming a focus of criticism for U.S. presidential candidates and as China’s growing diplomatic and military influence raises concern in the region and beyond.

The new anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties, which take effect on Thursday, also come at a time when growth in China’s auto market, now the world’s largest, is stalling.

The new China tariffs range from a 2-percent levy on BMW X3 models to almost 22 percent on GM vehicles and 15 percent for Chrysler.

“Clearly, the intention was to inflict pain on the Americans above all,” said Georges Dieng, a Paris-based analyst with Natixis Securities.

U.S. trade officials said they would discuss a response to China’s action with “stakeholders and Congress.”