China, EU Reach Trade Deal
     China and the European Union reached a market-opening trade deal late last week evening, clearing Beijing's largest remaining hurdle to joining the World Trade Organization. The European Union had pushed for more access to China's telecommunications, financial and automobile sectors. EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy described the deal as a "first-class agreement…This is a giant step forward." China agreed to open its mobile telephone market two years ahead of the schedule set in the U.S. deal. China also agreed that foreign firms could provide telecommunications services between Chinese cities and not just within one city and to permit foreign telecommunications firms to sell excess capacity on their networks. The European Union was the last major WTO member to conclude a bilateral trade deal with China.

Inside The Trade Push
     Extolling the benefits of trade's effects on the economy, Mike Maibach, Intel's vice president for government affairs, told an audience at the Economic Strategy Institute's three-day conference last week that high-tech business needs to do more to push a global trade agenda. "We don't have public support for international trade," Maibach acknowledged, as the vote on whether China should be granted PNTR draws closer in Congress. Maibach gave a nod to this issue, pushing for the PNTR status and noting with a barrage of charts and graphs the money making potential in China. He also encouraged businesses to address Latin America's technology gap, saying that of the world's regions, Latin America is far behind.

Export Review Time Shortened
     The House late last week approved an amendment to the fiscal year 2001 defense authorization bill that would allow some changes to computer export controls to go into effect faster than under current law. House lawmakers adopted the amendment, offered by Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-CA, which would reduce from 180 days to 60 days the amount of time Congress has to review changes to computer export controls covering about 50 countries, such as China and Russia. Industry officials might try to get the 60-day amendment included in the Senate's version of the defense bill as a way to try to ensure it can't be altered during House and Senate negotiations on the legislation. Meanwhile, the Clinton administration said it would likely wait until mid-year to make any changes to computer export controls.

Telecom
     India's Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan kicked off a week-long visit to the United States on May 20 in a move to promote India as a hot spot for IT investment. Mahajan also planned to highlight Indian's technology growth. Days before his visit, participants at the India Telecom 2000 conference underscored ways India has improved its telecommunications sector and the hurdles it still has to clear. Daniel Edwards, a Commerce Department official, said while India has made strides in opening its telecommunications sector up to competition, there remains an uncertainty about India's next step. More worrisome, he said, was India's reluctance during the World Trade Organization meeting to classify e-commerce under previously agreed upon trade deals. He said there also is an effort underway to tax electronic transmissions. On a more positive note, India recently passed an IT bill that gives electronic commerce a legal framework and outlines punishments for cybercrime.

French Court Rules Against Yahoo
     A French judge has ruled that Yahoo broke French law when it allowed a Web site it hosted to auction neo-Nazi objects. Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez ordered Yahoo to pay $1,390 each to the Union of Jewish Students and an anti-racism group. He also gave Yahoo two months to find a way to make the site inaccessible to Internet users in France. Both sides were told to return to court on July 24. The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism brought the case against Yahoo in April. Many Web companies were watching this case to see what effect it might have on Internet use in France. Under French law, it is illegal to exhibit or sell objects with racist overtones. Lawyers for Yahoo argued that it would not be technically possible for the company to scan the content of all the Web sites on its service.

E-commerce
     A report by IDC, an Internet research firm, predicts by 2003, the number of foreign Web users will exceed the number of U.S. users. The report, released this week, says consumer spending on Web sites in the United States will reach $119 billion, but overseas sites will do $209 billion worth of business. By 2003, Western European Web users will reach 215 million compared with 179 million in the United States."It's been taken for granted that international growth will take place," said Chris Silva, an analyst with IDC. "Up until now, a lot of companies are looking at their U.S.-based operations as their main focus. They are not really looking at the big picture."

Telecom
     A group of leading Internet companies are calling on governments to stay away from applying old telecommunications regulatory frameworks for the new economy in the wake this week's fourth Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Ministerial Meeting on Telecommunications and Information Industry, held in Cancun, Mexico. Members of the Global Internet Project, a group comprised of telecommunications, software, content and financial services companies, worried that some governments will apply old regulations used for broadcast and telecommunications to the Internet."As telecommunications, media, and IT companies use digital technologies to offer new Internet services, traditional regulatory policies, based on publishing, telephony, and broadcasting, may not apply in the Internet world," Michio Naruto, a GIP member, said in a statement. The GIP said it is not necessarily calling for new laws, but is proposing that government look at existing policies and see how they can be changed or eliminated to fit new technologies.
- by Caroline Broder