WTO members set themselves a target of July this year for finalising negotiations on a plurilateral deal on investment facilitation. This week participants tried to define a path towards meeting the challenging deadline.
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Week in Brussels: Ukraine duty suspensions, Mercosur politics comeback
Subsidies, digital and Indo-Pacific, but also Ukraine and Mercosur. These currently are the bread-and-butter trade issues in Brussels – and developments this week were very representative. Von der Leyen announces duty suspension extension for Ukraine European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced on Thursday (2 February) an extension to …
Perspectives: Adjusting to a new world of trade rules
Complexity and ambiguity are the new reality of global trade policy.
Week in London: Falconer’s CPTPP vision, potato seeds, Chinese glass fibre and steel
Here the latest on the UK trade policy beat.
EU and Singapore formalise digital partnership
The EU and Singapore signed a bilateral digital partnership in Brussels which could pave the way towards binding rules covering diverse aspects of digital trade.
THINK TANK: The weaponisation of trade
Foreign policy think tanks, usually absent from the trade policy conversations, are now busy working with trade. Weaponisation of trade, export controls, and European tech sovereignty are the themes addressed by two Berlin-based think tanks in recent days: the European Council on Foreign Relations and the German Council on Foreign …
Blog : More of the same? On the EU’s Green Deal Industrial Plan
Those in the trade policy world who are looking for some big bang announcement from the European Commission as part of its ‘response’ to the United States Inflation Reduction Act will be disappointed – or relieved, depending on their point of view. The Green Deal Industrial Plan, a leaked version …
Week Ahead: Singapore digital agreement, GSP trilogue, Argentina, Ukraine, WTO talks
Preview of the week by Rob Francis and Chris Horseman. Singapore digital partnership to be unveiled On Wednesday (1 February) EU commissioner for the internal market Thierry Breton and Singapore trade minister S. Iswaran will sign the Singapore Digital Partnership in Brussels. The parties had announced that the partnership had …
WTO Corner: US appeals national security cases into void, EU gets two China panels rolling
By Chris Horseman and Iana Dreyer.
Comment – EU export control policy weakness exposed with US-Netherlands deal
The world where export controls in the European Union were a highly technical affair focused on keeping dangerous items out of the hands of a few so-called ‘rogue’ states in a United States-led post Cold War order is now dead. In comes a world harking back to Cold War export …
