The EU’s Trade Policy in the Doha Development Agenda – An Interim Assessment on Rules Negotiations

At Doha Ministerial Conference in 2001, WTO members agreed to launch new trade negotiations on a range of subjects and other work, including issues concerning the implementation of the present agreements. Various issues in the WTO Doha Development Agenda were dealt with in the form of ‘single undertaking’ which include the trade remedy rules, i.e., anti-dumping and subsidies rules. The EU, being the largest regional economy in the world, was no doubt a heavyweight in the Doha multilateral trade negotiations and so was its trade policy of great weight. To date, the EU had put forward a total of 10 submissions to clarify and improve the AD Agreement and the SCM Agreement at the end of 2006, and the submissions revealed the EU’s attitude toward the Rules negoation; not aggressive but prudent and cautious. While Doha Round seemed doomed and gloomy, the EU, on the other hand, launched its new trade policy, the ‘Global Europe’ framework in 2006 pursuant to the goals set up by the conclusions of Lisbon European Council. The new EU’s trade policy is comprised of a wider array of trade issues, aiming at maintaining its global competitiveness, and in light of the growing fragmentation and complexity of the process of production and supply chains as well as the growth of major new economic actors, particularly in Asia, there was a need for a revision of the EU Trade Defence Instruments (TDI) . A “Green Paper” on TDI was thus drafted and presented for public consultation by the Commission at the end of 2006, which is intended to make sure EU TDI fit in the trend of globalization as well as the European multinational corporations' competiveness in the new economic context. This paper intends to explore if the possible trade policy adjustment in the EU TDI will also facilitate to resolve the discrepancy between the EU and its counterparts in the Rules negotiations and provide a solid basis for the conclusion thereof. Section II of the article presents the ongoing DDA negotiations, inter alia, Rules negotiations. Section III will probe the negotiation objective and issues that EU concern by examining its submissions to the Negotiating Group on Rules as well as its implementation assessment. The EU’s new trade policy, in particular, that on the newly released “Green Paper” on the TDI will also be analyzed in section IV. This paper concludes that the EU policy on TDI is expected to be adjusted toward a framework favorable to other economic operators, such as users and consumers. Whether the public consultation for “Green Paper” is a process of consensus building is still an argument. It is likely that EU delegate will narrow down the gap between the EU and other exporting-oriented members in the Rules negotiations should the revised TDI be expanded to a large extent

The influence of galaxy surface brightness on the mass-metallicity relation

We study the effect of surface brightness on the mass-metallicity relation using nearby galaxies whose gas content and metallicity profiles are available. Previous studies using fiber spectra indicated that lower surface brightness galaxies have systematically lower metallicity for their stellar mass, but the results were uncertain because of aperture effect. With stellar masses and surface brightnesses measured at WISE W1 and W2 bands, we re-investigate the surface brightness dependence with spatially-resolved metallicity profiles and find the similar result. We further demonstrate that the systematical difference cannot be explained by the gas content of galaxies. For two galaxies with similar stellar and gas masses, the one with lower surface brightness tends to have lower metallicity. Using chemical evolution models, we investigate the inflow and outflow properties of galaxies of different masses and surface brightnesses. We find that, on average, high mass galaxies have lower inflow and outflow rates relative to star formation rate. On the other hand, lower surface brightness galaxies experience stronger inflow than higher surface brightness galaxies of similar mass. The surface brightness effect is more significant for low mass galaxies. We discuss implications on the different inflow properties between low and high surface brightness galaxies, including star formation efficiency, environment and mass assembly history

An Absence of Radio-Loud Active Galactic Nuclei in Geometrically Flat Quiescent Galaxies: Implications for Maintenance-Mode Feedback Models

Maintenance-mode feedback from low-accretion rate AGN, manifesting itself observationally through radio-loudness, is invoked in all cosmological galaxy formation models as a mechanism that prevents excessive star-formation in massive galaxies (M$_*$ $\gtrsim$ 3$\times$10$^{10}$ M$_{\odot}$). We demonstrate that at a fixed mass the incidence of radio-loud AGN (L $>$ 10$^{23}$ WHz$^{- 1}$) identified in the FIRST and NVSS radio surveys among a large sample of quiescent (non-star forming) galaxies selected from the SDSS is much higher in geometrically round galaxies than in geometrically flat, disk-like galaxies. As found previously, the RL AGN fraction increases steeply with stellar velocity dispersion $\sigma_*$ and stellar mass, but even at a fixed velocity dispersion of 200-250 kms$^{-1}$ this fraction increases from 0.3% for flat galaxies (projected axis ratio of q $<$ 0.4) to 5% for round galaxies (q $>$ 0.8). We rule out that this strong trend is due to projection effects in the measured velocity dispersion. The large fraction of radio-loud AGN in massive, round galaxies is consistent with the hypothesis that such AGN deposit energy into their hot gaseous halos, preventing cooling and star-formation. However, the absence of such AGN in disk-like quiescent galaxies -- most of which are not satellites in massive clusters, raises important questions: is maintenance-mode feedback a generally valid explanation for quiescence; and, if so, how does that feedback avoid manifesting at least occasionally as a radio-loud galaxy?Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter