Fair trade coffee gains ground among fine, specialty brews As Bill Armbruster notes in Fair Trade: Sustainable Trend?, imported coffee accounted for 78% of all the fair trade premiums paid by US companies in 2011. Fair Trade USA reports that 2011 was a banner year for...
Fair Trade: Sustainable Trend?
Consumers are willing, but divorce divides the movement by Bill Armbruster, blog anchor Poverty has historically been the lot of small-holding farmers in developing countries. The fair trade movement seeks to change that by appealing to global consumers to pay a...
Uruguay’s Rising Star
S&P restores Uruguay to investment grade, while Fitch boosts outlook to positive After raising its sovereign credit rating on Uruguay to BBB-/A-3 from BB+/B1 on April 3, S&P followed up with the same boost to Citibank Uruguay’s global scale counterparty...
Colombia-US FTA Set to Go
With labor issues resolved, tariffs on US exports will fall starting May 15 The Summit of the Americas ended on a minor key, with headlines zeroing in on the continued exclusion of Cuba at the instance of the US and the bad behavior of US agents, while twitter...
Not So Invisible Hand Stirs Ethanol
Government policies shape biofuels markets Sometime around the middle of last year, the US surged ahead of Brazil to become the world’s highest-volume exporter of ethanol. According to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), the US boosted...
No Winner in Chinese Solar Case
Commerce finds countervailable subsidies, but will tariff help US industry? The Department of Commerce last week announced its preliminary determination that certain Chinese producers/exporters of crystalline silicon photovoltaic (CSPV) cells have indeed received...
Still Waiting in the Wings
KORUS kicks in as Colombia, Panama FTAs cool their heels by Bill Armbruster, blog anchor The Korean-US free trade agreement enters into force tomorrow, March 15. As I wrote here last month, the progress of FTAs is stately indeed: After President Obama signed the...
Gasoline Data Blend
Trade data belongs in the mix of energy market indicators Consumers may be riveted by the steady up-tick in prices at the gas pump, but the analysts who follow the energy market can’t afford that kind of tunnel vision. Multiple factors are driving the cost of oil. The...
Datamyne Top 5: Markets for Argentina’s Wine
Top South American producer, No.2 in the new world Datamyne’s South American team filed a report yesterday on the global market in wine (Needs Balance: Wine Market) and the “old world” producers’ efforts to shrink a global surplus in wine by cutting back vineyards....
Needs Balance: Wine Market
Are EU CMO reforms shrinking world’s wine lake? A report from Datamyne's team in South America They say that clinking glasses together in a toast lets us enjoy wine with the fifth sense, hearing … since the other four senses are already a part of the tasting. This...