Colombia’s Congress voted to table a free trade agreement with South Korea June 17. This was the third time the trade pact signed by the Colombian and South Korean governments in February 2013 failed to win Congressional ratification. Concerned about the FTA’s...
Is it serendipity or part of the Plano Brasil Maior to expand markets for Brazilian products? The World Cup’s opening day is also International Cachaça Day. Cachaça is Brazil’s national (distilled) spirit. And it is indeed one of the export products promoted by the...
About 40% of the exhibitors at next week’s Hospitalar healthcare fair in Brazil will be from foreign countries – recognition of the strength of demand for imports in the country’s US$167-billion healthcare market. The US Commercial Service will be at Hospitalar to...
It’s a textbook case in the need to diversify sources of supply: The US imports about 97% of its limes from Mexico and, right now, limes are a scarce and expensive commodity in Mexico. Disease and bad weather have combined to reduce crop yields, shortages have boosted...
Russians have launched a retaliatory Internet campaign of tongue-in-cheek sanctions against US President Obama, Reuters reports. It includes Twitter users forbidding Obama from Russian vodka under the hashtag “MySanctions” (#МоиСанкции). There’s every chance Obama...
In taking over Jim Beam, makers of the world’s best-selling bourbon, Suntory is not only aiming for a bigger presence in the US market, say analysts. The Japanese company is also banking on the world’s growing thirst for the spirit that Congress declared a...
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Latin American team reports Venezuelan GDP has slowed to 1.1% in the third quarter from 2.6% in the second quarter. The EIU analysts are particularly struck by a third-quarter contraction in Venezuelan imports of goods and services of...
Hoping to curb Mexican consumption of sugary soft drinks, President Enrique Pena Nieto has proposed a peso per liter tax on soda as part of a package of tax reforms. The public-health conscious measure follows a UN Food & Agriculture Organization report that...
Is this the curse of commodities export dependence at work? Peru's gross domestic product expanded 5.0% in May, lower than the expected 5.5 to 6.0% growth, the government announced last week. Barely two weeks earlier, President Ollanta Humala was remarking on Peru’s...
The US consumes most of what Mexico produces, but global markets are demanding a share of tequila. BusinessWeek reports that Mexico’s distillers are primed to conquer the Chinese market, now that China’s government has ended restrictions that blocked imports of the...
