Australia has become the sixth country to ratify the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, so the trade pact will go into effect Dec. 30, 2018. A second round of tariff cuts will follow Jan. 1 for countries party to the agreement that follow a calendar tariff year; Japan's second round will happen April 1. Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, Chile and Brunei have yet to ratify the trade agreement; Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, Japan, Singapore and now Australia have done so. The U.S. exited the TPP, the agreement's original name, three days after President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 (see 1810290044).

The European Union issued its latest version of the Combined Nomenclature, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2019, the EC said in a notice. The nomenclature is updated every year and "forms the basis for the declaration of goods (a) at importation or exportation or (b) when subject to intra-Union trade statistics," the EC said.

The World Customs Organization issued the following release on commercial trade and related matters:​​

The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices as of Oct. 29 (some may also be given separate headlines):

China and Japan signed an authorized economic operator (AEO) mutual recognition arrangement on Oct. 26, China's General Administration of Customs said in a news release. Such agreements allow for the countries to consider each other's trusted trader programs within import and export processing. Under the MRA, according to an informal translation, "China and Japan Customs will directly grant the following four convenience measures to the goods from the other AEO companies: full consideration of AEO qualifications when conducting risk assessment to reduce inspection and supervision; Rapid disposal; designated customs liaisons are responsible for communication to resolve problems encountered during AEO corporate clearance; after major infrastructure recovery from trade disruption, committed to providing maximum speed for goods imported from the other AEO company Clearance."

Canada gave notice on Oct. 29 that it had ratified the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership -- becoming the fifth of the 11 signatory nations to do so. The agreement -- which the U.S. exited just after President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 -- will come into force 60 days after the sixth country ratifies it. "The CPTPP is an excellent illustration of how 11 nations can come together against protectionism by liberalizing trade and strengthening the rules under which it is conducted," Canada's Minister of International Trade Diversification Jim Carr said. The other countries party to the agreement are Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Besides Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore have already ratified it.

The U.S. blocked requests from China, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Turkey and the European Union to examine the legality of steel and aluminum tariffs at the World Trade Organization on Oct. 29. Panel requests can only be blocked one time, so at the next meeting, the panels will be formed. The U.S. was also seeking panels on retaliatory tariffs from China, Canada, Mexico and the EU, and those were blocked.

If investments stall because of tariffs between the U.S. and China, the World Bank projects that the rate of growth will fall over all over the world. If the impacts are largely concentrated between the two global giants, China will be hurt worse than the U.S., and other countries will benefit, said Caroline Freund, the director of trade at the World Bank. Freund, a Chinese trade economist and a domestic China expert, spoke about the trade war Oct. 26 at a George Washington University conference on U.S.-China relations.

The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices as of Oct. 26 (some may also be given separate headlines):

The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices as of Oct. 24 (some may also be given separate headlines):