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The US must become a leading voice for open international trade - NYT Editorial
The New York Times
Editorial
Waiting for a Trade Policy
Published: July 5, 2010
"At a time when protectionism is rising around the world, the United States must become a leading voice for open international trade."
The White House has announced that it wants to move ahead with a long-ignored trade pact with South Korea. The deal was reached by former President George W. Bush, but with President Obama planning to visit South Korea for a summit meeting of the Group of 20 major economies in November, he has now committed to resolving the outstanding issues and submitting the treaty for ratification after the fall elections.
This is good news, to be sure. But it is hardly enough at a time when protectionism is rising around the world......(more)....
The United States and China both put buy-at-home provisions in their stimulus programs. Russia introduced incentives to develop products to substitute for imports. According to the Global Trade Alert from the Center for Economic Policy Research, a European economic research forum, countries around the world have imposed at least 443 discriminatory measures against imports since November 2008..... (more)
[Read the full article here]
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Lamy calls on G20 to begin to draw up exit strategies (Dow Jones)
WTO's Lamy Urges G-20 To Send Strong Signal To Break Doha Impasse
By Tom Barkley, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
TORONTO -(Dow Jones) - The head of the World Trade Organization on Saturday called for Group of 20 leaders to make a renewed push to break the "impasse" in the Doha round of trade talks.
"Toronto must send a signal that G-20 leaders are ready to spend political capital at home to get the Doha Round to the finish line," WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said in prepared remarks to a meeting of business and political leaders on the sidelines of the G-20 summit...
[more...]
...Lamy acknowledged that subsidies and other measures implemented during the global slump to support local economies were distorting trade. He called on the G-20 to start drawing up exit strategies. Those measures should be withdrawn "as soon as domestic economic recovery takes hold," he said.
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Russia and US most protectionist in G20 group according to ICC (Bloomberg)
Russia, U.S. Most Protectionist in Group of 20
June 29, 2010, 7:08 AM EDT
By Sophie Leung
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Russia and the U.S. have the most protectionist trade measures among the Group of 20 leading industrialized countries, according annual rankings released today in Hong Kong by the International Chamber of Commerce.
India and Argentina came third and fourth, while China was ranked sixth, just after Brazil, the Paris-based ICC said in the report, compiled by the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. Saudi Arabia was the nation with the fewest measures aimed at protecting its own trade....
....The ICC analysis was based on data from Global Trade Alert....
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Canada asks Russia to unwind trade barriers - Reuters report
Canada asks Russia to unwind trade barriers
(Reuters)
Louise Egan
TORONTO
Fri Jun 25, 2010 4:20pm EDT
Canada urged Russia and other G20 countries on Friday to unwind trade barriers erected during the financial crisis as part of a G20 pledge favoring free trade to support the global economic recovery.
In an interview with Reuters, Trade Minister Peter Van Loan said leaders from the Group of 20 emerging and advanced economies meeting in Toronto this weekend should be held accountable for their promise not to adopt protectionist measures, endorsed at the Pittsburgh summit last September.
Russia was high on the list of protectionist offenders spotlighted in a Global Trade Alert report by independent economists this week.
(More......)
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In memory of Juan Francisco Rojas Penso - a tireless advocate of Latin American integration
In memory of Juan Francisco Rojas Penso
Juan Francisco Rojas Penso leaves an indelible mark on the scene of Latin American integration; he was both an expert with strategic vision and an intellectually honest ‘man of action’, with a restless energy. Juan Francisco was committed in his belief that regional integration and development came hand in hand.
Juan Francisco upheld the idea of regional integration and struggled head on to move the processes and institutions that could help realise it – initially from within his country of birth, Venezuela, where he navigated through the ups and downs of the process and the subsequent discussion and questioning. True to his convictions Juan Francisco was consistent and loyal to his beliefs, and unafraid of challenging convention.
But it was at the regional level where Juan Francisco stood out – in respect of his ability to build consensus and to push through initiatives that others had considered too difficult and demanding. He revived the Latin American Integration Association, re-defined its role and transformed it into an indispensable tool for intra - Latin American trade negotiations.
He understood the role of ‘trade in services’ in regional integration and development, better and prior to others. With economic and political acumen, he was able to identify the long-term trends that determine the evolution of relations amongst Latin American countries.
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Unequal Compliance: The 6th GTA report
This Report of the Global Trade Alert, published to coincide with the Toronto G-20 Leaders' Summit in June 2010, presents a comprehensive global overview of protectionist trends since the last G-20 summit in September 2009. It draws upon a substantial expansion in the evidence collected by the GTA team during 2010 on the measures announced and implemented by governments since November 2008. The main findings of this Report are the following:
- Compliance with the G-20's No-Protectionism pledges is very uneven.
- Violations of the G20's pledges aren't cost free: the commercial interests of many G-20 countries have been hurt 100 or more times since the Pittsburgh Summit.
- Nearly 650 of the protectionist state measures implemented since the first crisis-related G-20 summit in November 2008 remain in place; there is much crisis-era protectionism to be unwound.
- Resort to beggar-thy-neighbour policies in 2009 turned out much worse than was known at the Pittsburgh Summit.
- Twenty-two far-reaching protectionist measures that harm 15 or more G20 trading partners and affect more than US$10 billion in trade were analysed in detail.Conservatively estimated, the trade covered by these so-called "jumbo" measures alone is approximately US$1.6 trillion, equivalent to more than 10 percent of world imports in 2008.
On the basis of this record and the influence of recent fiscal retrenchment on macroeconomic policymaking, the trade policy challenges for governments in the next 12 months are discussed. This Report will be of interest to trade policymakers, diplomats, senior officials, analysts, and others concerned with the contribution of the G-20 to global economic governance.
1. Executive Summary
Simon J Evenett
Section 1: Global Overview
2. Did G20 Members Hold the Line Against Beggar-thy-Neighbour Policies after the Pittsburgh Summit? The Rcord Since September 2009
Simon J. Evenett
Section 2: Specific Analyses of G20 Commercial Policy Measures
3. Assessing the G20 Use of Antidumping, Safeguards and Countervailing Duties During the 2008-2009 Crisis
Chad P. Bown
4. ‘Jumbo’ Discriminatory Measures and the Trade Coverage of Crisis-Era Protectionism
Simon J Evenett and Johannes Fritz
5. ‘Crisis and Modernisation’: An Analysis of Russian Commercial Policy and its Application to the Automobile Industry
Darya Gerasimenko
Section 3: Jumbo Measures: Potentially Far-Reaching Discriminatory State Measures
Section 4: G20 Compliance and Commercial Interests: Country-by-Country Reports
- 1806 reads
Pre-Toronto G20 report launched at Washington International Trade Association meeting
On June 23 2010 the sixth report of the Global Trade Alert was launched at the Washington International Trade Association (WITA). The report was prepared in advance of the G-20 summit in Toronto and includes:
- an assessment of trade policy measures taken since the Pittsburgh summit
- a G-20 country-by-G-20 country overview of state measures taken by a government and against its commercial interests by other governments.
- identification of 22 systemic--or "jumbo"--state measures that have each affected more than US$10 billion.
- discussion of the implication of these findings for future G-20 initiatives on trade policy.
The full text of this report should be available on this website later today. An executive summary can be found at a voxEU column on www.voxEU.org
For further details please contact either Simon Evenett (simon.evenett@gmail.com) or Viv Davies (vdavies@cepr.org)
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"Protectionism mounting despite G20 pledge" - Reuters preview GTA's 6th Report
Protectionism mounting despite G20 pledge: GTA report
(Reuters, Jonathan Lynn, Geneva
Mon Jun 21, 2010 1:14pm BST)
GENEVA (Reuters) - Major trading powers are continuing to impose protectionist measures in defiance of a promise by G20 leaders to keep markets open, according to a report by independent economists.
The report, by Global Trade Alert (GTA), to be issued later this week to coincide with the G20 summit in Toronto, finds that such policies in 2009 turned out much worse than was known at the time of the Pittsburgh summit last September.
"The costs of the ineffectual G20 pledges mount quarter by quarter," Simon Evenett, an economics professor at St. Gallen University in Switzerland and coordinator of GTA, said.
The report finds that nearly 650 protectionist measures implemented since the first crisis-related G20 summit in November 2008, when leaders promised to avoid protectionism, remain in place.
The findings of GTA, which has consistently warned that protectionism is running at a far higher level than governments acknowledge, are not shared by all economists.
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NOTE:
The 6th Global Trade Alert Report
The 6th Global Trade Alert report will be published later this week to coincide with the Toronto G20 Leaders' Summit. It presents a comprehensive global overview of protectionist trends since the last G20 summit in September 2009. It also draws upon a substantial expansion in the evidence collected by the GTA team during 2010 on the measures announced and implemented by governments since November 2008.
- 149 reads
"Europe Is Failing To Shape The Global Governance Debate" says Eurasia Review
Europe Is Failing To Shape The Global Governance Debate
Saturday, 12 June 2010 01:19
By Pedro Solbes and Richard Youngs for FRIDE
The reform of global economic governance is still firmly on policymakers’ radar screens, but there is little evidence that since London’s G20 Summit in April last year the EU has developed a forwardlooking or coherent approach to the new forms of global governance that G20 leaders had committed to.
Several strands of the current European debate are ostensibly joined together by a shared commitment to multi-lateralism. In devising rescue plans for the EU’s financial sector, its drawing up of the new ‘2020 strategy’ and the fashioning of a new EU diplomatic identity, the principle of enhanced multilateralism has taken centre stage. And yet the way in which the EU is currently positioning itself on global governance belies its self-declared status as the world’s ‘good multilateralist’.
The G20 pledged that multi-lateral co-operation and interdependence would guide the world out of crisis. Most European policies, however, do not sit well with the spirit of such commitments.
The EU may not have imposed sweeping quotas and tariffs, but powerful ‘behind the border’ protectionism has emerged in the form of subsidies, bailouts, ‘buy national’ injunctions and new restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI). Global Trade Alert, an independent monitor, has identified more than 300 new protectionist measures introduced by G20 members.
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Global Trade Alert celebrates 1st birthday on 8 June 2010
The Global Trade Alert was formally launched in London, UK, on 8 June 2009, implying that its first birthday is tomorrow. By 7 June 2010, the Global Trade Alert:
- Team had completed and published 1031 reports on state measures that might affect international commerce.
- Website had been "hit" by users over 276,000 times.
- 9364 users had returned to this website 9-14 times. Just under 7200 users had returned to the site 15 or more times since its launch.
- Findings have been mentioned in at least 155 newspaper articles and other media outlets.
- 288 reads
