News: Opinions
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.
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Australia in the African Century
Dr Lauren A. Johnston is Research Associate at SOAS China Institute, Visiting Senior Lecturer, Adelaide University Institute of International Trade and Founding Director, New South Economics.
Last month’s inaugural ‘Quad’ – Australia, India, Japan and USA – leaders’ call drew attention to Australia’s Indo-Pacific strategic re-positioning. The “Indo” of that debate has so far focused mainly on ties with Indian Ocean majors - Indonesia and India.
The market is a powerful instrument to counter human rights violations in China
Andreas Freytag, Professor and Chair of Economic Policy, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena and Visiting Professor with IIT
European Union (EU) foreign ministers have finally responded to China's documented human rights abuses by imposing sanctions on four individuals and one organization believed to be substantially involved in the oppression of Uyghurs in north-western China. Reports of the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighurs provide evidence of mass detention and human rights abuses.
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Putting “Values” into Value Chains in an Era of System Rivalry
Naoise McDonagh, Lecturer in Political Economy, Institute for International Trade.
The EU and U.S. have a history of using trade agreements to project their value-systems on trading partners. The EU is forthright about this goal, stating: “projecting our rules and values in trade agreements helps the EU shape globalisation, especially on issues like human rights, working conditions and environmental protection”
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An Opportunity for Leadership on Trade Secrets Protection in the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement
Douglas C. Lippoldt, International Trade Economist & Senior Fellow, CIGI, and Mark F. Schultz, Professor & Goodyear Chair in IP Law, University of Akron School of Law
The proposed Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement aims to promote innovation as a key priority, with provisions in support of bilateral foreign direct investment, balanced protection of intellectual property rights, and co-operation in research and development (R&D).
With a new Director General, can the WTO become a force for progress again?
Andreas Freytag, Professor and Chair of Economic Policy, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena and Visiting Professor with IIT
Six months after the resignation of Roberto Azevédo the World Trade Organization (WTO) finally has a new leader. With Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the WTO is breaking new ground twice: for the first time in WTO history a woman is the Director-General, and for the first time the WTO is headed by an African woman.
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Is plurilateralism making the WTO an institutional zombie?
Dr Naoise McDonagh is Lecturer in Political Economy at the Institute for International Trade.
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) 2014 Trade Facilitation Agreement is the only significant multilateral agreement it has concluded since its inception in 1995. Against that success, significant failures stand out.
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Rethinking WTO Rules on Chinese Industrial Subsidies, and Approaches for Future Reform
Weihuan Zhou is Associate Professor, Director of Research, and Member of the Herbert Smith Freehills China International Business and Economic Law (CIBEL) Centre, Faculty of Law and Justice, UNSW Sydney. Mandy Meng Fang is Assistant Professor, School of Law, City University of Hong Kong.
The reform of WTO rules on industrial subsidies should be based on a better understanding of the efficacy of the rules on China and fresh principles and approaches. It is time for governments to rebuild the political will needed for international cooperation.
Pursuing an Open Strategic Autonomy trade policy against China: Expect policy fluidity
Weinian Hu is Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Belgium. The EU’s Open Strategic Autonomy policy approach was first revealed under the Commission’s recovery plan post-Covid, which was released in May 2020.
Putting the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) into perspective: Five key points
Bryan Mercurio is Simon F.S. Li Professor of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. On 30 December 2020, the European Union (EU) and China ‘in principle’ concluded negotiations on a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). The European Commission published the text of the CAI on 22 January 2021. The agreement has been welcomed by the business community but criticised by civil society and the United States (US).
The views expressed here are the author’s, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute for International Trade.
This work is licensed under Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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