Events

The Argentinean government’s intentions to strengthen national industries and stabilise its current accounts have led to irresponsible trade and investment policies. Various forms of import restrictions are lined up and international investment rules are ignored by the Argentinean government.

2013 is set to be a crucial year for market integration in the Asia-Pacific. The launch of the TPP negotiations will be followed by RCEP (ASEAN plus Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and New Zealand) announced at the East Asia Summit in November, together with the surprise announcement of the three-party FTA between China, Japan and Korea (CJK).

The rise of the Renminbi (RMB) as a key currency in international financial markets has been fast. It reflects China’s general expansion in the ‘real’ world economy, and its accumulation of official foreign exchange reserves. There is no doubt that the role of the RMB for the global economy will increase. Just three decades ago, that seemed like a very remote notion. The question now is if the RMB will assume a pivotal role as an instrument for transactions in international trade and investment as well as, ultimately, as a reserve currency.

Greater openness to trade and investment with Asian growth economies would help to boost Europe’s services sector. A particularly interesting market for European firms is Taiwan. Its services market has grown fast in the past decades, and today Taiwan is increasingly becoming a hub for services firms trading with other countries in the region. This is particularly true for trade with China as the cross-Strait rapprochement has opened up for new opportunities of regional services integration in East Asia. Many other countries are now moving to be part of this integration. What should be Europe’s response?

It is said that we live in the Age of Asia – the global economy is increasingly dependent on Asian markets and political attention is swinging to the Asian-Pacific region. The latter is especially true with respects to business and trade. With the potential for a TPP or RCEP (regional agreement centred around ASEAN), a new regional architecture is emerging

These are dangerous times for the multilateral trading system. Never since its establishment in 1995 has the World Trade Organization been in such a perilous state. The shambolic 1999 Seattle Ministerial Conference previously represented the nadir in the fortunes of the organization but it rallied quickly afterwards and launched the Doha Round just two years later. Now no such recovery is in prospect. Dispute settlement apart, the WTO scene is characterised largely by drift and neglect, with no apparent light at the end of the tunnel. How did this state of affairs come about, and what are the potential consequences for the global trading system?

ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) was meant to enforce and harmonise IPR provisions in existing trade agreements within a wider group of countries, yet its implementation failed in Europe when European Parliament rejected this trade agreement earlier in July.

While trade agreements are motivated by better access to export markets, they are also catalysts for necessary domestic reforms to improve competitiveness. However, there is no shortage of critics who object to reforms or increased foreign imports and workers at home, especially in a time of crisis.

This summer saw a meltdown of the trade diplomacy between the EU, China and the US over trade defence. One particular contagious topic was state subsidies - and the use of countervailing duties against them. The debate led to a very public display of discord amongst the EU leadership, while the never-ending spat over subsidies to Airbus and Boeing turned into a transatlantic soap opera.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, now being negotiated between 11 states including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam, is supposed to solve many of the problems that have come from overlapping trade deals in the past decade. It is also supposed to be different—“a high quality, 21st century” agreement that will set standards for future trade agreements.