Hosuk Lee-Makiyama
Email: hosuk.lee-makiyama@ecipe.org
Office: +32 (0)2 289 1350 Mobile: +32 (0)499 694 249
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Areas of Expertise: European Union EU Trade Agreements EU Single Market Trade Defence Healthcare Services Digital Economy WTO and Globalization Far-East North-America Russia & Eurasia South Asia & Oceania

Hosuk Lee-Makiyama is the director of European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) and a leading author on trade diplomacy, EU-Far East relations and the digital economy.
He is regularly consulted by governments and international organisations on a range of issues, from trade negotiations to economic reforms. He appears regularly in European, Chinese and US media, and is noted for his involvement in WTO and major free trade agreements. He was also named “One of the 20 most influential people for open internet” by the readers of the Guardian UK in 2012. He was the first author to argue for a WTO case on internet censorship in China.
Prior to joining ECIPE, he was an independent counsel on regulatory affairs, competition and communication, Senior Advisor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, representative of Sweden and the EU member states towards the WTO and the UN, including WIPO and UNECE. Lee-Makiyama is also a Fellow at the department International Relations at the London School of Economics, and currently shares his time between LSE and ECIPE.
ECIPE Policy Briefs
The Economic Losses from Ending the WTO Moratorium on Electronic Transmissions
This paper is co-authored with Badri Narayanan, PhD, Associate Professor at University of Washington, Consultant at McKinsey Global Institute, UN ESCWA, FAO, Commonwealth Secretariat and GTAP Research Centre. Background Since 1998, the WTO Members have applied a moratorium against tariffs on international electronic transmissions (commonly referred to as the WTO ‘E-Commerce’ Moratorium). However, some WTO Members have recently debated whether the...
ECIPE Policy Briefs
Europe and South-East Asia: Shifting from Diplomacy to Unilateralism
• The postponement of the planned ‘strategic partnership' between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the EU highlights deep concerns and divisions for opening up in the relationship. The EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (FTA), and Investment Partnership Agreement (IPA), stand alone as a success for EU-ASEAN trade relations, in an otherwise troubled landscape. Bilateral trade agreements with Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand remain...
ECIPE Policy Briefs
The EU-Japan EPA – Freer, Fairer and more Open Trading System
In the context of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement soon to be concluded by both parties, ECIPE organized a high-level conference to discuss the economic benefits and social dimensions of this agreement. It is an important agreement for both sides, but also comes at a time when the principles and practice of the open and rules-based trading system are stressed. The conference reflected stakeholders’ positions on what new trade opportunities will this...
ECIPE Occasional Papers
The Cost of Fiscal Unilateralism: Potential Retaliation Against the EU Digital Services Tax (DST)
The EU is proposing a digital services tax (DST) to tax certain so-called ‘digital companies’, which it alleges access the Single Market while paying ‘minimal amounts of tax to our treasuries’. But like all exporters, these firms pay the majority of their taxes where their product development takes place, and services are designed and implemented. The EU has singled out certain revenue streams, as it claims they have a high reliance on intangibles and...
Media Mention
Huawei chief offers to share 5G know-how for a fee
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama comments Huawei licencing plans for the...
Media Mention
Phil Hogan to be the new face of increasingly assertive EU trade policy
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama featured in Borderlex's profile of new trade...
Media Mention
France is giving unilateralism a go
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama comments on the French GAFA tax for the...
Media Mention
Imposing tariff on digital companies will be counter-productive: Report
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama & Badri Narayanan study on the repercussion of tariffs for digital goods and services featured on the Financial...
Article
Global Digital Trade 1: Market Opportunities and Key Foreign Trade Restrictions
Digital Trade Estimates Project Database used in USITC...
Article
Digital technology diffusion: A matter of capabilities, incentives or both?
Digital Trade Restrictiveness Index used in OECD...
Article
Digital Trade in the US and Global Economies
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama hearing at USITC used in...
Article
Digital Dividend: Policies to Harness the Productivity Potential of Digital Technologies
Digital Trade Restrictiveness Index used in OECD...
Book or Paper
Briefing Note: AI & Trade Policy
The ministerial discussion at the 2018 Tallinn Digital Summit was led by Hosuk...
Book or Paper
On Rule-based Trading in Uncertain Times
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama and Hanna Deringer discuss New Zealand’s role in the new trade architecture for The Policy Observatory at Auckland University of...
Book or Paper
Technology and Patents: The Imbalances in Europe
Rositsa Georgieva and Hosuk Lee-Makiyama's article on EU and US patent reforms in the digital age, World Economics, Spring...
Book or Paper
TPA and the Democratic disunity — Obama’s trade bill, jobs and income inequality in America
Lee-Makiyama blogs on trade and income inequality at...
Speech or Presentation
Expanding Digital Protectionism
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama's presentation at METI-JETRO International symposium: “International Trade Rules in the Digital Age – Challenges and...
Speech or Presentation
Free movement of data in the EU
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama speaking at the EIF meeting in the European Parliament, defending the Free Flow...
Speech or Presentation
Brexit and trade: what EU and WTO rules imply
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama speaks at Bruegel on Brexit: on WTO, FTAs, TRQs, CUs, RoO, CAP, TTIP and...
Speech or Presentation
C-SPAN: Cleaning the Slate, Trade under Trump
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama speaking on the Capitol Hill and C-SPAN about trade under Trump, organised by Georgetown CBPP...