News: World Trade System
The Landing Zone in Trade Agreements for Cross-Border Data Flows
Dr Pascal Kerneis, expert in the European services industry in international trade and investment negotiations.
The digitalisation of the world economy is continuing at a fast pace. Its successful progress is dependent on the ability to move data as freely as possible across international borders. Digital trade chapters are therefore becoming a critical part of bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral trade agreements.
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Geostrategic Tensions Manifesting as Trade Conflict: Policy Recommendations for rebuilding Australia-China relations
Co Authors: Mike Adams, former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) economist, Ron Wickes, former Director of the Trade Analysis Section of DFAT and Nicolas Brown, former head of DFAT’s branch responsible for analysis and strategic advice on trade.
China-Australia diplomatic relations are at their lowest point in decades, reflected in trade relations that have become increasingly strained by Beijing’s coercive tactics. Acknowledging that there is little chance of getting back to the positive relationship that Australia and China enjoyed just four or five years ago, this brief argues for a pragmatic diplomatic approach where trade can support a revival of mutually beneficial and broad-based trade and investment relations with China. This need not be at the cost of security and broader strategic interests and could in fact enhance them, irrespective of cultural, political and historical differences.
New research highlights knowledge and skills gaps in key trade areas for business
The United Kingdom (UK) ceased to be a member of Europe’s single market and customs union on 1 January 2021, triggering enormous changes in patterns of trade between the UK, Europe and Australasia, and generating new regulatory and legal barriers between markets that previously experienced almost frictionless movements of goods, services and people.
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Economic Coercion by China: The impact on Australia's merchandise exports
WORKING PAPER 04
Australia is estimated to have foregone export revenue of around US$4.9 billion (A$6.6 billion) over July 2020 to February 2021 as a result of China’s restrictions or discriminatory purchasing affecting eight key commodities – coal, copper ores and concentrates, frozen beef, wine, cotton, barley, rough wood and rock lobster.
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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.
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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”.
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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.
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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.
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