EU blames China for WTO environmental trade talks collapse (Channel News Asia, 5 December 2016)
Europe’s trade negotiator Cecilia Malmstrom has blamed China on Sunday for scuppering a global environmental trade deal by submitting impossible late demands at World Trade Organization talks aimed at scrapping import tariffs on exports worth more than US$1 trillion. “China came in with their list, bringing in totally new elements of perspective, which was very late in the process,” Malmstrom told Reuters. The change of U.S. president also puts a big question mark over the future prospects for a deal. European resistance to Chinese bicycle imports has also been a stumbling block, although Malmstrom said bicycles had become totemic for China and nobody else, and the agreement went far wider, adding that the EU had “quite cheap bicycles already”.