When nations rank highly for imports and exports according to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study, that is usually cause for celebration. A recent OECD study, however, has left a number of Asian nations with a bit of a black eye for their popular trade items. The study in question ranked the nations with the largest traffic in counterfeit and pirated goods.
ASEAN is on the lookout for ways to accelerate trade facilitation and eliminate trade barriers by 2025 under its new 10-year ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) roadmap. Extensive research has demonstrated the vital role of global value chains (GVCs) in enhancing economic integration and liberalising trade.
According to World Bank and OECD research, GVC-driven policies have been shown to drive productivity growth, create jobs and improve living standards. So what exactly are GVCs and are they the solution that ASEAN is looking for?
After years of talks, negotiators concluded an agreement on the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in October 2015. Since China is excluded from the TPP, one would expect antagonism rather than symbiosis between the Washington-advocated trade package and Beijing’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) strategy. However, closer scrutiny suggests that the TPP and OBOR may be converging by design and destiny.
There seems to be a pushback against trade agreements in the post-global financial crisis era. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was signed in early 2016, but US presidential candidates have spared no effort criticizing it so near-term ratification is highly uncertain.
The WTO Doha Round is in the deep freeze after 14 years of negotiations. Unilateral trade liberalization has virtually come to a standstill.
Although international economic treaty news has lately been peppered with more stories about better-known trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), there is another treaty that has been generating just as much discussion and, in some cases, animosity.
The treaty in question is the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), intended to be an agreement between the European Union (EU) and Canada. Unfortunately, while negotiators announced that they had reached an agreement on CETA back in October 2014, it has been stuck in the approval phase ever since.
The goal of trade policy is not limited to increasing export opportunities. Nor is it just about improving trade balances. Rather trade policy is about taking opportunities to improve the economy’s productive base. When assessing a nation’s experience with bilateral trade agreements, this test should be applied.
In each bilateral agreement Australia has completed to date, projections of the potential gains for Australia, based on unimpeded access to all markets of the other country involved, were released prior to negotiations.
It is widely recognized that the sharp depreciation of the Japanese yen has not lifted Japanese export volumes. In December 2015, Japanese export volumes had fallen 4.4% year-over-year after rising 3.9% in December 2014 and 2.5% in December 2013.
These are a number of explanations for this counter-intuitive result given the yen’s past depreciation. First, global demand is weak. Second, has adopted a direct investment strategy rather than an export-orientation.
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s protectionist prescriptions have led to renewed speculation about whether trade wars are on the horizon.
In other words, if, under a Trump presidency, the United States were to raise its tariffs against some of its biggest trading partners – China, Japan, and Mexico – would those countries retaliate in kind? In addition, what would this mean for the global economy?
On Monday, China agreed to Nepal’s proposal to build a strategic rail link between the two nations through Tibet. The new line will reduce Nepal’s dependence on India for shipping. The agreement was proposed and brokered by Nepal’s Prime Minister, K P Oli.
Pakistan’s trade with India leaves much to be desired. The volume of bilateral trade is very low, ranging between only 2 to 3 percent of each country’s total trade, and is concentrated in a few commodities. Trade is low and limited because the trade regimes of each country are closed to each other.
Bilateral trade between Pakistan and India has always faced a series of tariff and non-tariff barriers that are a consequence of the political tensions between the two countries.
