Ghana on US' list of 55 worst countries ....

...said to block U.S. trade
WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush's administration cited 55 countries Thursday, including Ghana, in its annual review of countries it alleges have the worst trade barriers faced by U.S. exporters.

The report, which also named three trading groups, is intended to guide administration negotiating strategy in the coming year in attacking alleged barriers that are causing the greatest harm to U.S. companies.

If direct talks with a country do not produce results, then the administration can bring a case against the country before international regulators with the World Trade Organization.

The United States is running record trade deficits, with the biggest imbalance last year recorded with China, a trade gap of $124 billion US. That's the largest deficit ever recorded with a single country.

The trade barriers report devotes 39 pages to a discussion of alleged trade barriers erected by China, including a review of the administration's efforts to persuade China to stop linking its currency to the U.S. dollar, a practice manufacturers in the United States contend undervalues the Chinese currency by as much as 40 per cent, giving products from that country a huge competitive advantage against their goods.

Japan, which until recently was the country with the largest trade surplus with the United States, came in for 34 pages of discussion in the new report, the same number of pages devoted to discussing trade practices in the European Union the United States found objectionable.

Countries cited in the report were: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam and the trading groups of the European Union, the Arab League and the Gulf Co-operation Council.