Announcement Number: TN-19-DOE-1530-OCDH
Closing Date: 16 September 2020

The WTO Secretariat has published a new report on the treatment of medical products in regional trade agreements (RTAs) amid current supply shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The report examines the extent medical products are traded among preferential partners and the difference in liberalization rates within and outside these trade agreements.

Food security is increasingly dependent on international trade, making it critical to keep trade in food flowing, WTO Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff noted on 30 April. In remarks delivered on his behalf by WTO Agriculture Division Director Edwini Kessie at the “Trade Dialogues on Food” webinar, he said that, on balance, governments have been quick to recognize the value of international trade for global food security during the COVID-19 crisis and are taking concrete action to protect the global food supply chain from disruption. His remarks are below:

Canada has contributed over CAD 90,000 (approximately CHF 60,000) in 2020 to enhance the trading capacities of developing countries and least-developed countries (LDCs). This donation to the WTO’s DDA Global Trust Fund will finance training workshops and seminars for government officials, with the aim of deepening their understanding of current trade issues and challenges and improving their negotiating skill-set.

The WTO Secretariat has published a new information note looking at how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected e-commerce, including the implications for cross-border trade. It notes the increased use of e-commerce as consumers adapt to lockdowns and social distancing measures and draws attention to several challenges, such as the need to bridge the digital divide within and across countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has underlined the need for greater multilateral cooperation, including the need to improve the global trading system, Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff said on 7 May. Speaking at a webinar hosted by the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, DDG Wolff said trade will play an important role in Africa’s economic recovery from the crisis, particularly through increased intra-African trade.

In remarks delivered to a virtual meeting on 7 May hosted by the Foreign Trade Authority of Saudi Arabia, Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff said governments must step up international cooperation to respond to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the multilateral trading system, this includes addressing measures to deal with the global health emergency, cooperation to support the needed economic recovery, and assuring the system is more resilient and effective in underwriting future global economic growth. DDG Wolff’s remarks are below

A new report issued by the WTO on 8 May seeks to help least developed countries (LDCs) better understand the trade-related implications of graduation from LDC status. The product of a joint effort between the WTO and the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF), “Trade Impacts of LDC Graduation” looks at how graduation may affect LDCs’ participation in world trade, including their access to export markets, and implications for their WTO commitments.

Early Stage SF is around the corner, on April 28 in San Francisco, and we are more than excited for this brand new event. The intimate gathering of founders, VCs, operators and tech industry experts is all about giving founders the tools they need to find success, no matter the challenge ahead of them. Struggling […]

The worlds of virtual and augmented reality have yet to land on the applications and hardware to truly spark mass-market, consumer interest in the space, but in the meantime, a startup building mixed reality services for business users has raised a round of funding, underscoring the opportunity in enterprise. Spatial, which has developed a “holographic” […]

TC Early Stage SF goes down on April 28, and we are getting pretty damn excited about it! The show will bring together 50+ experts across startup core competencies, such as fundraising, operations and marketing. We’ll hear from VCs on how to create the perfect pitch deck and how to identify the right investors for […]

Seed fundraising is rarely easy, but it certainly used to be a lot less complicated than it is today. In a simpler world, a seed investor (or maybe two) would lead a round, which meant that they would write the terms of the deal in a term sheet and then pass that document to their […]

Jack Dorsey announced in a series of tweets today that he is shifting $1 billion in his Square equity to create a fund dedicated to COVID-19 relief. The Twitter and Square CEO is calling the fund Start Small and posting a tally of disbursements and recipients in a public spreadsheet. Dorsey said in his announcement […]

23andMe. MongoDB. Eventbrite. Evernote. Bird. Square . Tumblr. Unity. YouTube. Xoom. Roelof Botha has had a seat on each of these companies’ boards, but his list of investments is much, much longer. The Sequoia partner, leading the firm’s U.S. business, is legendary in Silicon Valley and the broader tech world, and we’re very excited that […]

EIA releases the findings of the Annual Energy Outlook 2020 with long-term projections of U.S. energy supply, demand, and prices, including cases with different assumptions about macroeconomic growth, world oil prices, and technological progress. The event will feature a presentation by EIA Administrator Dr. Linda Capuano followed by a panel discussion on the challenges and market trends facing the electricity sector.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released updated projections of future U.S. energy production and use in its Annual Energy Outlook 2020 (AEO2020) today.

EIA will present results from four alternative policy scenarios to the Annual Energy Outlook 2020 (AEO2020) published in an Issue in Focus article. The article and the presentation will examine the potential effects of a range of alternative energy policies on the future U.S. electric power sector through 2050.

In the April Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA forecasts that the United States will again become a net importer of crude oil and petroleum products in the third quarter of 2020 and remain a net importer in most months through the end of 2021. Fewer barrels are available for export as U.S. crude oil production continues to decline. In addition, net exports of petroleum products will be lowest in the third quarter of 2020, when U.S. refinery runs decline in response to lower demand for refined products.

Layoffs are having a big impact on industries across the board due to COVID-19. This week alone news came out of massive cuts for TripAdvisor, Lyft, and reportedly Juul and Uber. But according to data tracker Layoffs.fyi, the cuts have affected certain job roles more than others. Sales and customer success roles are the most […]

Apple and Google ask for developer feedback on their contact tracing efforts, Facebook sees a “significant reduction” in ads and Microsoft makes life easier for IT managers. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 30, 2020. 1. Apple and Google release first seed of COVID-19 exposure notification API for contact tracing app developers This is a […]

While global stay-at-home orders have been a blow to most companies, they’ve also created opportunities for businesses helping to keep people entertained. So if you’re a YouTube creator hoping to capture some additional eyeballs while everyone’s stuck at home, online video agency Butter Works has released an interactive report outlining the most promising topics for […]

Creatively was supposed to launch this summer, according to CEO Greg Gittrich. And then COVID-19 happened. “We made the decision to fast-track the launch when the pandemic hit, because we felt like launching as a beta would really help the creative community,” Gittrich told me. The startup was founded by Stacey Bendet and Joe Indriolo, […]

YouTube is giving advertisers a few more tools to reach consumers and measure ad effectiveness on TVs. These tools already exist for YouTube on other platforms, but now the Google -owned video service is bringing them to connected televisions. In a blog post, it says this is in response to how YouTube viewership has grown […]

“Waco,” a Paramount Network series that recently started streaming on Netflix, dramatizes the tragic real-life standoff between the FBI, the ATF and the Branch Davidians. A couple of your Original Content podcast hosts only had a fuzzy idea of what actually went down in Waco, Texas in 1993. And all of us were surprised by […]

The average retail price for home heating oil rose 2.3 cents from last week to $3.08 per gallon. That's down 2.3 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.99 per gallon, up 1.8 cents from last week, but down 10.9 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil rose 4.7 cents from last week to $3.12 per gallon. That's up 3.2 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $3.04 per gallon, up 5.4 cents from last week, but down 5.1 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell 1 cent from last week to $3.11 per gallon. That's down 3 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $3.01 per gallon, down 1.9 cents from last week, and down 10.6 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell 3 cents from last week to $3.07 per gallon. That's down 10 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.99 per gallon, down 2.3 cents from last week, and down 15 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell 6.8 cents from last week to $3.01 per gallon. That's down 16.4 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.92 per gallon, down 6.8 cents from last week, and down 22.7 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell 5.2 cents from last week to $2.94 per gallon. That's down 23.8 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.85 per gallon, down 5.5 cents from last week, and down 30 cents from a year ago.

Henry Hub natural gas spot prices averaged $2.02 per million British thermal units in January according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Typically, January natural gas prices are among the highest of the year; however, warmer-than-normal January temperatures across much of the northern hemisphere contributed to the lowest average January spot price in many years. After beginning 2018 and 2019 with low U.S. working natural gas inventories, EIA forecasted that normal winter temperatures in the first quarter of 2020, along with production growth, would bring total inventories back over the five-year average this winter. So far this winter, temperatures have actually been warmer than normal, and EIA estimates that in January there were 18% fewer heating degree days in the United States than the prior ten-year average. As a result of reduced space heating demand, U.S. natural gas working inventories ended January 9% above the five-year average, higher than previously forecasted. In its February Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA forecasts that at the close of the April-October injection season, working inventories will reach almost 4.1 trillion cubic feet on October 31, which would be the highest end-of-October inventory record on level. Expecting inventories to remain elevated as winter heating season winds down, EIA forecasts that Henry Hub natural gas prices will average $2.21 per million British thermal units in 2020, down from $2.57 per million British thermal units in 2019. In 2021, EIA expects natural gas prices to increase, reaching an average annual price of $2.53 per million British thermal units.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell 2.2 cents from last week to $2.91 per gallon. That's down 26.9 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.83 per gallon, down 2.1 cents from last week, and down 31.7 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil rose by half of a penny from last week to $2.91 per gallon. That's down 31.1 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.83 per gallon, down half of a penny from last week, and down 34.8 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell by 3-tenths of a cent from last week to $2.90 per gallon. That's down 33.4 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.81 per gallon, down 1.2 cents from last week, and down 37.1 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell by 6.8 cents from last week to $2.82 per gallon. That's down 40.6 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.73 per gallon, down 7.4 cents from last week, and down 44.9 cents from a year ago.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. dry natural gas production will average 95.3 billion cubic feet per day in 2020, up 3% from 2019. However, EIA expects monthly production to generally decline through 2020, falling from an estimated 96.3 billion cubic feet per day in January to 92.3 billion cubic feet per day in December. Most of the decline in production will occur in the Appalachian and Permian regions. In the Appalachian region, low natural gas prices are discouraging drilling for natural gas. In the Permian, low oil prices are expected to reduce the associated production of natural gas from wells drilled to produce oil. In its March Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA forecasts that U.S. dry natural gas production will average 92.6 billion cubic feet per day in 2021, down 3% from 2020. This would be the first decline in average annual natural gas production since 2016.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell by 6.6 cents from last week to $2.76 per gallon. That's down 47.4 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.67 per gallon, down 7.3 cents from last week, and down 52 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell by 14.1 cents from last week to $2.61 per gallon. That's down 60.9 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.51 per gallon, down 15.1 cents from last week, and down 66.5 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell by 14 and a half cents from last week to $2.45 per gallon. That’s down 76.9 cents from a year ago, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.38 per gallon, down 12.3 cents from last week, and down 79.7 cents from a year ago.

The average retail price for home heating oil fell by 2.6 cents from last week to $2.42 per gallon, based on the residential heating fuel survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Heating oil prices in the New England region are at $2.36 per gallon, down 2.8 cents from last week.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is forecasting that U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) will decrease by 7.5% in 2020, driven by the economic slowdown and restrictions on business and travel activity related to COVID-19. This follows a 2.7% decrease in emissions in 2019. EIA forecasts that energy-related CO2 emissions will then increase by 3.6% in 2021. In its April Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA estimates that in 2020, CO2 emissions from petroleum will decrease 7% and from coal will decrease 18.4%. EIA creates estimates of energy-related CO2 emissions based on energy consumption and on the amounts of CO2 that are released when different fuels are burned. Total CO2 emissions depend on total energy consumption and the fuel mix of the energy consumed. When it is burned, coal creates the most CO2 of the major fossil fuels. However, because more petroleum products (such as motor gasoline) are consumed than coal, petroleum is the largest source of CO2 emissions in the United States. Natural gas is the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel, but in recent years, because of its increasing consumption, it generates more U.S. CO2 emissions than coal. Non-fossil fuels such as nuclear power and renewable generation emit no direct CO2 at the end use. As these noncarbon generation sources increasingly enter the fuel mix, energy demand can be met without a proportional increase in energy-related CO2.

In its April Short-Term Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. electricity generation will decline by 3% in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 related economic slowdown. Most new generating capacity built in 2020 will use renewable energy sources. EIA expects renewable generation to grow by 11% in 2020. Although EIA expects renewable energy to be the fastest growing source of U.S. electric generation in 2020, the economic slowdown will reduce the total amount of new generating capacity over the next few months. The electric power sector will add 19.4 gigawatts of new wind capacity and 12.6 gigawatts of utility-scale solar capacity in 2020. These annual wind and solar capacity additions are 5% and 10% less, respectively, than EIA forecast in its March outlook. This update combined with EIA's forecast lower overall electricity demand, leads to a decline in U.S. fossil fuel generation, especially at coal-fired power plants. EIA expects that coal generation will fall by 20% in 2020.

In the April Short-Term Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that the United States will again become a net importer of crude oil and petroleum products in the third quarter of 2020 and remain a net importer in most months through 2021. More net imports of crude oil and less net exports of petroleum products drove this change. EIA expects net crude oil imports to increase because as U.S. crude oil production declines, fewer barrels will be available for export. Net exports of petroleum products will be lowest in the third quarter of 2020, when U.S. refinery runs will decline significantly because of lower demand for refined products. In September 2019, the United States exported more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported for the first month since records began in 1973. EIA previously expected the United States to continue as a net exporter in most months through 2021. However, as a result of recent significant changes in global oil market dynamics, EIA now expects U.S. imports and exports will be even in 2020. It is important to note that the April outlook is subject to heightened levels of uncertainty because the impacts of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease on energy markets are evolving.

After three years in development, the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) has released a set of standards that are game-changing for shareholders and the profession, says PwC.

CEOs are more optimistic about growth than international counterparts, despite concerns about over-regulation and the Government's response to Australia's fiscal deficit, according to a PwC report launched today.

The sale of New South Wales' and Queensland's utility assets will be among the most eagerly anticipated power deals globally in 2015, according to a PwC report released today.

PwC Australia is delighted to announce a partnership with The Australian National Committee for UN Women in a joint effort to promote gender equality.

The key to Japan's economic future lies in growing it's engagement with the countries on its doorstep, according to a PwC report released today.

While technology and innovation are transforming our economy, they are also the solution to our workforce and growth challenge.