Brussels, 08/02/2011 (Agence Europe) - In the view of Pascal Lamy, commercial tensions resulting from the American and European deficits to China, for example, are based on an obsolete way of measuring international trade. This tension will disappear once the way of measuring trade has been changed. Currently, trade is measured as if a product was made in a single country, even though the production chain now involves more than one country in many cases. The i-Pod is the best example of this. It is designed in the US in terms of R&D, design and marketing, and it is assembled in China by Apple, with components produced in a number of countries. However, Chinese exports of i-Pod help to increase the American trade deficit with China, which, in the view of the WTO boss, would be at least halved if the imported content of exports were taken into account. Lamy would therefore like to re-examine the statistical techniques for measuring trade. He explained this in the columns of the Financial Times last week, ahead of a meeting in Geneva on 4 February with 150 statisticians from various countries of the world. (E.H./transl.fl)