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Strengthening African Agricultural Trade: The Case For Domestic Support Entitlement Reforms

Africa Agriculture

Reform of domestic agriculture support in the form of financial subsidies has long been a vexed issue. One relatively promising area for reform is to address WTO members’ entitlements to deploy domestic support, rather than aiming to cut actual expenditures per se. Specifically, reducing entitlements would diminish members’ rights to increase domestic support payments in future. Such reductions are best targeted at those subsidies that distort trading partners’ production and trade incentives, rather than at subsidies generally regarded as either relatively benign, or minimally distorting to support domestic farmers and the agricultural economy. Read our latest working paper on this important issue.

[Read more about Strengthening African Agricultural Trade: The Case For Domestic Support Entitlement Reforms]

Taking a Step Towards Modernizing Agriculture Trade Policy

Agriculture

Ken Ash, Independent Consultant, IIT Visiting Fellow, and former OECD Director of Trade and Agriculture.
Carmel Cahill, Independent Consultant and former OECD Deputy Director of Trade and Agriculture.

Twenty-eight years after agriculture was brought into the rules-based multilateral trading system global production remains significantly distorted by policy support. Unless WTO members put away their well-worn talking points and adopt a fresh approach to modernizing the rules for agriculture trade, the future risks looking much like the past.

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The EU’s ‘Chips Act’: A Rent-Seekers Paradise or a Feasible Industrial Policy?

Microchip

Andreas Freytag, Professor and Chair of Economic Policy, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena and Visiting Professor with IIT. 
Microchip shortages are high on the agenda of governments and businesses feeling the pinch of ongoing supply shortages. Not least for this reason, there is a broad political consensus in Europe that strong support is needed for the European chip industry in order to be independent of Asian manufacturers in the future.

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Improving Border Adjustment Mechanisms

Gas emissions

Professor Mike Young, Institute for International Trade, The University of Adelaide. The European Union (EU) and a number of other countries including the USA, Canada, Malaysia and Japan are in the process of considering how best to prevent the flow of jobs and investment to countries that are making slower progress in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

[Read more about Improving Border Adjustment Mechanisms]

Strengthening African Agricultural Trade: The Case For Domestic Support Entitlement Reforms

Africa Agriculture

WORKING PAPER 07
Reform of domestic agriculture support in the form of financial subsidies has long been a vexed issue. One relatively promising area for reform is to address WTO members’ entitlements to deploy domestic support, rather than aiming to cut actual expenditures per se. Specifically, reducing entitlements would diminish members’ rights to increase domestic support payments in future. Such reductions are best targeted at those subsidies that distort trading partners’ production and trade incentives, rather than at subsidies generally regarded as either relatively benign, or minimally distorting to support domestic farmers and the agricultural economy.

[Read more about Strengthening African Agricultural Trade: The Case For Domestic Support Entitlement Reforms]

Foreign Minister Wang Yi Makes a 9th ‘first trip of the year’ to Africa

China

Dr Lauren A. Johnston is Visiting Senior Lecturer, Adelaide University Institute of International Trade and Founding Director, New South Economics. China continues to prioritize its relations with Africa. As a result, China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, has continued with a longstanding Chinese tradition of making an African country the first foreign visit of the year. This op-ed provides analysis of which countries were visited, and why, as well as how the schedule fits with China’s development strategy in Africa.

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Why Australia fails to understand the EU

EU

Richard Pomfret, Jean Monnet Chair in the Economics of European Integration at the Institute for International Trade, 2017-2020. Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Adelaide. Australian political leaders have long held a simplistic and misleading understanding of the European Union, due to over-reliance on reports from London for coverage of EU affairs. This op-ed argues Canberra needs to develop a more diversified and modern understanding of the EU project, and its value to Australia.

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Strengthening African Agricultural Trade: The Case For Domestic Support Entitlement Reforms

Africa Agriculture

15th December, 2021. The University of Adelaide's Institute for International Trade (IIT) launched its latest research report on Strengthening African Agricultural Trade: The Case For Domestic Support Entitlement Reforms. At the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) twelfth Ministerial Conference at the end of 2021, WTO members are again considering how best to reform domestic support (subsidies) to agriculture.

[Read more about Strengthening African Agricultural Trade: The Case For Domestic Support Entitlement Reforms]

The WTO is back in business?

Crisis WTO Appellate

Industry Professor Jane Drake-Brockman, Institute for International Trade, The University of Adelaide and Founding Director of the Australian Services Roundtable, writes for the Council on Economic Policies (CEP) urging immediate more widespread support for the multilateral trading system.

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Can Germany’s New Coalition Modernize the Country to Meet 21st Century Challenges?

 Reichstag Building Germany

Andreas Freytag, Professor and Chair of Economic Policy, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena and Visiting Professor with IIT.
Since Wednesday, the traffic light coalition has been in place and the new Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been elected. This will mark the end of a long Merkel era and the beginning of a new era under Social Democratic leadership.

[Read more about Can Germany’s New Coalition Modernize the Country to Meet 21st Century Challenges?]

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