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What future for the global trading system amid trade, technological and geopolitical confrontations?

PB AGonzalez

By Anabel Gonzalez - Independent consultant on Trade and Investment. 
With trade conflicts, new technologies and geopolitical competition reshaping the global economy, the trade and investment policy landscape is rapidly changing. While different scenarios are playing out, managed trade is gaining traction, rules are increasingly fragmented in competing spheres of influence and global trade governance is weakening. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is under strain and the business environment is more uncertain, volatile and increasingly power-driven than before. 

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World In a Box - 50 years of containerization in Australia

World In a Box Video Launch 1

On 22 October IIT staff and students participated in the launch of World in a Box by Minister for Trade Tourism and Investment, Senator The Hon Simon Birmingham at the University of Adelaide. 

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Launch - World in a Box -Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

World In a Box Video Launch 2

On 22 October IIT staff and students and Centre of Excellence Director Richard Pomfret participated in the launch of World in a Box by by Minister for Trade Tourism and Investment, Senator The Hon Simon Birmingham at the University of Adelaide.  The short film commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first international container ship in Australian ports.  The Minister was welcomed by Executive Dean of the Faculty of Professions, Professor John Williams.  The audience contained DFAT officials and representatives from Australian ports and exporters as well as from Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping line.

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Trade & Investment in Services Associates (TIISA)

Trade & Investment in Services Associates (TIISA) held its first annual conference at the World Trade Institute at the University of Bern in Switzerland on 20-21 September 2019. Researchers from six of the partner institutions  presented papers around the theme Trade in Services by Mode of Supply. The conference also included papers from staff of the WTO, the OECD and the US Federal Reserve highlighting major new advances in data on services trade as well as services research from those institutions.

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The Second Adelaide-Bologna Dialogue on Australia-EU Relations

AUEUGroup

Hosted by the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, on 13 September 2019. Participants investigated why the time is opportune by examining the evolution of EU and Australian trade policies and situating this evolution in the twenty-first century world trading system.

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Does Mr Johnson have a Brexit-Strategy?

brexit blog

Professor Andreas Freytag 
FSU Jena, University of Stellenbosch, CESifo Research Network, and STIAS
September 13th, 2019
Since his inauguration in late July 2019, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has not missed a single opportunity to push himself into the international limelight and provoke controversial reactions in Britain and elsewhere. The tentative climax of the Johnson show was his forced prorogue of the British House of Commons a few weeks before Britain's final exit from the European Union (EU).

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Rethinking Trade Architecture - Adelaide Trade Policy Conference

Alan Wolff

Speaking at IIT's recent ‘Rethinking Trade Architecture’ conference held at The Intercontinental Hotel on 10 September, Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff reflected on the current challenges facing the world trading system and what the system might look like in the year 2050. He foresaw that the system will continue to be tested but it will endure and improvements will be made to make it “effective with respect to all aspects of global needs, not least economic development”.  To read his full speech click here

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Globalization, Robotics and the Future of Work "The Globotics Upheaval"

Globotics Upheaval

 IIT hosted a Public Seminar at The National Wine Centre. Globalization, Robotics and the Future of Work "The Globotics Upheaval" Presented by Professor Richard Baldwin, International Economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. In a world of disruptors and “virtual” globalization, how should we prepare and respond to “future-proof” jobs and hard-won prosperity? Who will be the winners, and who the losers?

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Reflections on the Global Review of Aid for Trade Conference

Reflections on the Global Review of Aid for Trade Conference

Jim Redden Visiting Fellow Institute for International Trade 
Over the three day review, I was involved in a significant number of the workshops and plenaries, and held meetings with donors and recipient partners of Aid for Trade (AfT) gaining insights into a range of themes and issues that have emerged as high priorities for the next 2-3 years.  Below I have attempted to summarise a number of those priorities.

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How can LDCs ensure they continue to benefit from special and differential treatment in the WTO?

MH PB03 WTO

Mike Humphrey - Senior Trade Advisor IIT - As most international-trade observers are aware, debate is currently raging about the World Trade Organization’s relevance and role, its need for organisational reform, and the lack of progress in the Doha Round. Special and differential treatment (S&DT) provisions are an important component of this wider debate, and particularly the question of which countries should benefit from them - an issue intimately tied to the matter of self-designation.

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