Past Events

One of the driving forces of trade expansion in the past two decades has been the globalisation and fragmentation of supply chains in international business. Recently, a new data base by the WTO and the OECD has shed lights on how transformative this force has been, reinforcing the anecdotal and scattered evidence existing before. But what are the implications for trade-policy strategy? How should strategies to free up trade and establish stronger disciplines be designed as to fit with how global trade work today?

No doubt the world economy is undergoing some profound structural changes. Even if the crises in the past years have been felt everywhere, rising and globalising Asia – together with some economies in other parts of the world – has continued its rapid economic expansion. It represents a large portion of global production, trade and investment – and the lion share of world growth for the rest of this decade is estimated by the International Monetary Fund and others to be generated in Asia.

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.