Hosuk Lee-Makiyama

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...

• 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...

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...

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...