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Economic Coercion & International Trade. Policy Roundtable
Wednesday 30 March, 2022. Policy Roundtable, ‘Economic Coercion and International Trade: the nature of the challenge and policy response options’. Hosted by Institute for International Trade, sponsored by Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. Arbitrary instances of economic coercion by state actors have become frequent in recent years, undermining multilateral norms and rules. In Brussels and Canberra there is growing concern and debate over the systemic quality of such coercion, as well as how to respond while maintaining a stable international trading system. Swedish Deputy Head of Mission Per Linnér will provide an EU perspective on this critical issue, followed by a brief overview of geopolitical trends driving coercion from IIT’s Dr Naoise McDonagh.
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Leveraging the Full Potential of Plurilateral Initiatives in the WTO
Tuesday 23rd November, 2021. The Institute for International Trade (IIT), the Trade and Investment Research Network (TIRN) & TIRN steering committee organizations,held a webinar with leading experts for an interactive discussion on the "Plurilateral Initiatives in the World Trade Organization (WTO)". The webinar serves to launch the Policy Brief to a global audience in advance of the WTO’s Twelfth Ministerial Conference. A moderated presentation and ensuing interactive discussion involving a selected group of experts.
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Introduction to Digital Trade
LAUNCH EVENT: "Introduction to Digital Trade" Online Board and Executive Learning Video. A suit of online learning modules were developed in collaboration with Queen Mary University of London, Orebro University, Council on Economic Policies and Australian Services Roundtable. The launch of these learning modules was hosted by ASR, with funding support of the TIISA Network and Erasmus+ Funding.
How China challenges the liberal trade order: Coercion, contestation and the socialist market economy.
WORIKING PAPER 08
The original China ‘engagement strategy’ was grounded in the assumption that WTO membership would turn China into a liberal market economy. Today the engagement strategy is acknowledged as having failed by China’s largest trading partners, who increasingly view Beijing as a systemic rival. Yet, much international economics still views the engagement strategy as a viable approach for driving liberal reforms within China, indicating a growing gap between political thinking and international economics. This paper addresses that gap, arguing there are theoretical and empirical grounds that support viewing China as a rival economic system that will increasingly challenge core aspects of the existing liberal trade order.
All told, Australian sanctions will have almost zero consequences for Russia
Naoise McDonagh, Lecturer in Political Economy at the Institute for International Trade
Will Australia’s sanctions hurt Russia? This article outlines why #Australian sanctions are symbolic only, by discussing the conditions under which sanctions can be effective and explaining why such conditions do not exist in the Australia-Russia economic relationship. Other countries, such as the US, UK and EU, who do have conditions for effective sanctioning power against Russia, must make complex calculations to maximise deterrent power while minimizing as far as possible costs for them.
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The EU Digital Market Regulations: Rule-Maker or Deal-Breaker?
Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås, Magnus Lodefalk and Joakim Wernberg
Digital transformation of the economy and society gives rise to a need for updated regulations and rules of the game for the digitised market. Within the EU, this need is reflected in a number of legislative initiatives, most recently the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Artificial Intelligence Act. This work affects not only the European market but also international trade relations that extend beyond the EU's borders. The EU is also part of the Joint Initiative (JI) on E-Commerce which was launched at the 11th WTO Ministerial in 2017 and aims at setting the global rules for digital markets.
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Strengthening African Agricultural Trade: The Case For Domestic Support Entitlement Reforms
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.
Taking a Step Towards Modernizing Agriculture Trade Policy
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?
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
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.
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