India needs to &quot;do more&quot; in WTO talks: U.S.
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India, Brazil and other large  developing countries &quot;need to step up&quot; in world trade talks and  make the market-opening concessions needed to reach a deal, a  top U.S. official said on Wednesday.
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The last chance for a world trade  deal could slip away in the next few months unless India,  Brazil and other advanced developing countries offer meaningful  commitments to open their market to more foreign goods, U.S.  private sector experts said on Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - Putting new restrictions on H1-B visas in the U.S. would be a barrier to trade, the president of a large Indian trade association said Wednesday. The remarks come in response to an inquiry by two U.S. senators into alleged misuse of the visas. Trade between the U.S. and India is two-way, and U.S. companies like Dell , Microsoft, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard are benefiting from higher sales of computers and software to India's IT industry, according to India's NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies). NASSCOM made public on Wednesday contents of a letter about the issue, which it sent to U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Richard Durbin, who are investigating the alleged misuse of H1-B visas. It appears that companies are using H1-B visas to displace qualified, American workers, Grassley said in a statement earlier this month. New provisions proposed by the senators to ensure that H1-B visas are being used to meet a worker shortage and not to replace U.S. workers have been included in a bipartisan compromiseÂ immigration bill currently before the U.S. Senate. Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, and Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, earlier this month wrote to nine Indian companies, asking them for details on their use of the H1-B visas. NASSCOM said it had sent letters on behalf of the nine Indian companies to the senators. The nine companies together account for close to 20,000 H1-B visas, the senators said on their Web sites. Among the companies that received these letters were India's top outsourcers Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro. NASSCOM considers the issue of work permits like the H1-B visas and intracompany transfers from India to the U.S. as a trade issue that should not be confused with immigration issues. "We want to avoid this being confused as an immigration issue, particularly because it has come up in an immigration bill," NASSCOM's president Kiran Karnik said. India's minister for commerce and industry, Kamal Nath, has also warned of repercussions on ongoing World Trade Organization negotiations if there were any attempts to restrict H1-B visas. NASSCOM particularly objects to a clause in the immigration bill that prohibits companies from hiring H1-B employees if they employ more than 50 people and more than 50 percent of their employees are H1-B visa holders. This prohibition will affect the U.S. operations of Indian outsourcing companies as often they have to take staff from India to work on clients' projects, according to Karnik. These workers are in the U.S. on H1-B visas because they have the knowledge and experience to handle clients' requirements, Karnik said. It is also difficult for Indian companies to hire technical staff in the U.S., because of a tight labor market, he added. Taking staff from India on H1-B visas is not a way to get cheap labor, according to Karnik. The rules of the H1-B visa program allow H1-B visa holders to change jobs within the U.S., and market forces ensure that wages cannot be artificially suppressed, he added. The H1-B visa is an employer-sponsored, nonimmigrant work visa for a foreign worker coming temporarily to the U.S. to perform services in a specialty occupation. Indian outsourcing companies depend on these visas as a significant proportion of their staff work at client locations in the U.S. NASSCOM and some U.S. technology companies have asked for an increase in the current H1-B visa cap, which limits the number of visas annually to 65,000. In its letter to the senators, NASSCOM also mentioned that the largest outsourcing contracts from the Indian private sector, as also from the Indian government, have gone to U.S. companies. It said Indian students now form the biggest group of foreign nationals studying in U.S. universities, spending an estimated $3 billion a year. India is a major buyer of a whole host of U.S. goods and services, including aircraft, wheat, branded garments, and accessories, and the rapidly growing Indian economy is importing ever-larger quantities of these goods and services, NASSCOM said.
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The United States called for the World Trade Organisation to set up a complaints panel to investigate European Union customs rules which Washington says penalizes US exports.
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KALPAKKAM: India on Saturday urged the West to remove blocks on the transfer of critical nuclear technology, offering an assurance that New Delhi had effective tools to prevent proliferation.
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Russia must do more to show it is  committed to "the basics of democracy" if it wants deeper  relations with the West, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice  said on Saturday.
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The Indian government and its  communist allies said on Wednesday they had constructive talks  to resolve their row over a nuclear deal with the United States  but more negotiations were needed to try and find a solution.
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The European Union called Monday for more movement from its partners in World Trade Organisation talks after WTO chief Pascal Lamy injected a sense of urgency into attempts to revive the negotiations.
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PARIS, Dec 7  - The United States wants rapid progress in resolving a dispute with the European Union on public aid to rival aircraft makers Boeing and Airbus, and will call for World Trade Organisation mediation if US-EU talks do not produce results
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The World Trade Organization called on the United States and Europe to lower their farm barriers in return for greater access to India, Brazil and other parts of the developing world for exports.
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Lawmakers on Friday urged the U.S. and Chinese governments to follow two days of high-level talks on trade and economic concerns with concrete action.
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Trade ministers from a key group  of developing nations pressed the United States and the  European Union on Saturday for more concessions to help break  deadlocked global trade talks.
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India and the United States held talks for a second day to resolve differences over a nuclear energy agreement that will give India access to long-denied Western nuclear technology.
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US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today said that Washington wants its defence ties with India to be further &#39;knitted&#39; together.
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The head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said on Friday that bilateral talks between major trade powers to revive the Doha trade round were still moving too slowly.
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ZURICH: The Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) of WTO has authorised seven countries, including India, to impose trade sanctions up to $150 million on the United States for its non-compliance with the WTO ruling that found the US Byrd Amendment on anti-dumping
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Russia is dragging its feet in talks on joining the World Trade Organization and must get its act together if it is to accede this year, a European Union diplomat was quoted on Monday as saying.