News from the Institute for International Trade
Search news stories
Enter a keyword to search news.
APEC Study Centre Consortium Conference
6 - 7 July 2021. Professor Jane Drake-Brockman presented at the recent APEC Study Centre Consortium Conference.
Loss of LDC-Specific S&D Treatment: How Concerned Should Graduating LDCs Be?
Professor Mustafizur Rahman, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Dhaka, Bangladesh
Before the COVID-19 pandemic had struck in 2020, 12 LDCs had become eligible for graduation by either meeting at least two of the three graduation criteria, or thanks to having crossed the threshold of double the per capita GNI. Graduation during a pandemic raises significant risks in and of itself, but there are other issues too, including that graduation criteria fail to capture many of the underlying causes of vulnerability and institutional weaknesses that persist in the LDCs. Consequently, eligibility of a large number of LDCs for graduation has raised an important development debate as outlined in this article.
[Read more about Loss of LDC-Specific S&D Treatment: How Concerned Should Graduating LDCs Be? ]
Stakeholder Perspectives on an Australia-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement
Monday 21st June, 2021
Australia and the United Kingdom launched negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) on 17 June 2020. Both sides have committed to an ambitious and comprehensive agreement that covers services, investment and digital trade. With an agreement-in-principle now in place, the focus turns to how to maximise the benefits of the agreement and the future of Australia-UK services trade.
[Read more about Stakeholder Perspectives on an Australia-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement]
Research Grant Round 4: Successful Applicants
Jean Monnet Network: Trade & Investment in Services Associates (TIISA) announces Research Grants - Round 4
[Read more about Research Grant Round 4: Successful Applicants ]
Can progress be made multilaterally on agricultural trade?
The WTO has been experiencing deadlock in its negotiating function since the collapse of the Doha Round. This threatens to undermine the legitimacy of the WTO, and drive Members to seek progress outside the organization. The difficulties of agricultural negotiations offer a microcosm for understanding the wider multilateral universe. Against this background, a group of academics, former high-level officials of international institutions and former negotiators have come together to try to inject some new energy and new ideas into the multilateral process in a project called “New Pathways”.
[Read more about Can progress be made multilaterally on agricultural trade?]
Industrial Subsidies and their impacts on exports of trading partners: The China Case
WORKING PAPER 03
This paper explores the impact of Chinese subsidy interventions in the upstream sector on the competitiveness of the downstream sector. In particular, the paper investigates the effect of Chinese subsidies on basic metal products on the export competitiveness of downstream sectors in other major trading countries. To explore the impact of base metal subsidies interventions on the downstream sector of a trading partner, we exploit both temporal variation in subsidy interventions and in base-metal consumption by the downstream sector.
“Joint Statement Initiatives” and Progress in the WTO System
Andrew Stoler, former WTO Deputy Director-General; former Office of the United States Trade Representative senior trade negotiator.
“Joint Statement Initiatives” (JSIs) are today seen by many governments as crucial to making trade progress, given some WTO Members opposition to further liberalization and rulemaking on a multilateral basis. Two governments that have actively worked to stymie progress, India and South Africa, are currently challenging the legality of JSIs within the multilateral system of the WTO in a new bid to prevent other WTO Members from moving forward on the trade front.
[Read more about “Joint Statement Initiatives” and Progress in the WTO System]
Webinar: Services Domestic Regulation
Thursday 6 May, 2021
Over 140 participants from around the globe joined leading experts for an interactive and topical webinar discussing the WTO Joint Initiative on Services Domestic Regulation, hosted by the Institute for International Trade. A large high level panel, lead by key note speaker Jaime Coghi Arias - co-ordinator of the Joint Initiative spelled out the benefits of the potential Agreement
Webinar: US Trade Policy
Wednesday 5 May, 2021.
Under the Trump administration U.S. trade policy took a decidedly unilateralist turn, which had significant negative effects for multilateralism, referring to cooperation between nations in a rules-based world trading system. IIT’s Executive Director Professor Peter Draper provides probing moderation to draw out the key insights, in a must-watch conversation on U.S. trade policy.
Services Domestic Regulation - Doing the Obvious
Markus Jelitto is Counsellor at the Services Trade Division, WTO Secretariat, Geneva.
Services Trade has been growing continuously over the past three decades and was worth USD 13.3 trillion in 2017. Services value added accounts for almost half of all world trade (goods and services combined). Despite these impressive figures, the 2019 WTO World Trade Report finds that costs of trading services are about twice as high as trade cost for goods. A significant portion of these costs are attributable to regulatory divergence, as well as opaque regulations and cumbersome procedures. Through the development of disciplines on services domestic regulation, a group of currently 63 WTO members has set out to address these cost factors.
[Read more about Services Domestic Regulation - Doing the Obvious]
This work is licensed under Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
IIT is a global leader in researching, analysing and commenting on International Trade.
Stay informed about our up-and-coming seminars, events, publications, awards, new projects and collaborations, and other exciting news.