Economics & Business Archive

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series examining the record of Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Part I reviews her domestic policy. Part II will examine her foreign policy. Though often dismissed as the puppet of her exiled brother, Yingluck Shinawatra has survived several critical challenges since becoming Thailand’s first female prime minister in a landslide victory in July 2011 elections. Yet despite initial hopes for reform, the past year and a half have demonstrated that the Yingluck government’s ultimate goal is to maintain its grip on power, and that the successes of Yingluck and her Pheu […]

China recently announced plans to invest $635 billion in water infrastructure over the next 10 years, prompting criticism about the effect of China’s water policy on its downstream neighbors. Scott Moore, a doctoral research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government researching sustainable energy development in China, explained the context and possible consequences of the plan in an email interview. WPR: What is the context of China’s recent announcement of plans to dramatically expand its hydropower capacity over the next few years? Scott Moore: Three factors frame China’s recent plans to expand its hydropower capacity. The first and most important […]

Mexico relies more than most other countries on free trade agreements to fuel economic development. In the 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement helped solidify Mexico’s return to democracy, and, given that international trade accounts for more than 60 percent of Mexico’s economy, no Mexican president can do without a clear strategy for fostering better access to foreign markets. But while President Enrique Pena Nieto claims that the economy is the highest priority on his agenda, his administration has yet to spell out how Mexico will trade with the world. Pena Nieto has inherited a plan to expand Mexico’s […]

For the past 60 years, there has been convergence between the strategic logic of America’s strategy of forward deployment in key regions of the world and the economic imperative of securing the nation’s prosperity. Despite the constant protests on college campuses about “banana republics” and “no blood for oil,” there was, in fact, generally a strong correlation between the places where the American military was engaged and those areas that were seen as vital to the economic health of the country. Opposition from naturally isolationist tendencies of the American body politic was overcome, in part, by the argument that prosperity […]

On Sunday, Cyprus will hold runoff presidential elections between conservative candidate Nicos Anastasiades and the left-leaning Stavros Malas. The election will likely determine whether Cyprus, one of the eurozone’s economic trouble spots, will accept a bailout from the European Union in exchange for economic reforms or risk a bankruptcy that will aggravate the eurozone crisis. Anastasiades, the conservative, pro-bailout candidate, is favored to win. Demetris Christofias, the current president, has resisted meeting the tough terms of the bailout. The European Union, meanwhile, has not hidden its hopes for an Anastasiades victory. James Ker-Lindsay, a senior research fellow who studies the […]

Mexico’s economic resurgence is attracting widespread attention and optimism, with the Financial Times recently dubbing the country the “Aztec Tiger.” The change in focus and tone is a welcome one, and has allowed a more balanced and accurate portrayal of Mexico to emerge. Mexico’s prospects look better now than they have in decades. President Enrique Peña Nieto has been in office just three months, yet there is a sense of urgency attached to his ambitious agenda. Substantial challenges loom, and surmounting them will require his administration’s full complement of skills: from political deal-making and legislative maneuvering to strategic communications and […]

The East African Community (EAC) provides a useful lens through which to examine the prospects for broader regional integration in East Africa. The current EAC is built on a long history of regional cooperation, including a High Commission (1948-1961), a Common Services Organization (1961-1967) and even a previous attempt at an EAC, which was formed in 1967 and managed to build shared institutions before collapsing in 1977 under the weight of trade imbalances and ideological differences. In spite of the collapse, the three founding countries — Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania — agreed to explore and identify areas for future cooperation, […]

At a press briefing Monday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman responded to North Korea’s Feb. 12 nuclear test by calling for all parties to avoid taking action that could worsen the situation on the Korean Peninsula. While China expressed its opposition to the test, Beijing also stated its desire to see an early resumption of the Six-Party Talks seeking a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and called for the Security Council to adopt measures that would seek “realization of denuclearization, nonproliferation, and peace and stability on the peninsula.” Meanwhile, Chinese news commentary blamed U.S. intransigence as much as DPRK recklessness for the […]

With only days to go before Armenia’s Feb. 18 presidential election, all signs point to a victory for incumbent President Serzh Sargsyan. Should he be re-elected as expected, Armenia will most likely maintain its status quo, which saw Yerevan open modestly to the West and Euro-Atlantic initiatives but ultimately remain bound to its longstanding alliance with Moscow. Sargsyan is likely not only to win the election handily but also to easily clear the 50 percent threshold required to prevent a second-round runoff. With Armenia’s opposition badly fractured and handicapped by the noncandidacies of two of the most credible opposition figures […]

On Monday, U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, sponsored the second annual “Opportunity: Africa” conference at Delaware State University. The senator’s remarks emphasized the need for the U.S. to recognize the metamorphosis of the continent. “We’re trying to shift the American mentality toward Africa from aid to trade,” Coons told Trend Lines in an email interview after a full day of conversations on expanding economic engagement with Africa. The U.S. has lagged behind China in seizing trade and investment opportunities in Africa, he said, in part because of outdated assumptions and in part […]

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on East Asian energy cooperation. Part I examined cooperation in energy conservation and natural gas markets. Part II examines cooperation in nuclear energy. Despite heightened political tensions among Japan, China and South Korea over territorial disputes in the East China Sea, Asian economic cooperation remains critical to the global economy as it struggles to return to widespread growth. Energy cooperation among these three Asian powers offers an opportunity for much-needed constructive engagement, and nowhere is this more urgent than in the area of nuclear energy. Before the Fukushima nuclear accident […]

In his second annual report on the state of the NATO alliance, released at the end of January, and in his Feb. 2 speech to the 2013 Munich Security Conference, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen laid out a very ambitious current and future security agenda for the alliance, while stressing the need for NATO governments to sustain adequate defense spending to develop the capabilities needed to achieve the alliance’s goals. In this regard, Rasmussen identified four gaps where spending levels are producing capabilities deficits. The first is the traditional trans-Atlantic gap between the United States and its European allies, which […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on East Asian energy cooperation. Part I examines cooperation in energy conservation and natural gas markets. Part II will examine cooperation in nuclear energy. Over the past few months, Japan’s relations with China and South Korea have deteriorated rapidly over territorial disputes. This is particularly true for relations between Japan and China, which are often described as having “cold politics and a hot economy,” with the implication that political tensions will not damage economic ties. But now, reactions to the territorial disputes are beginning to spill into the economic realm, […]

On India’s Navy Day in December, Indian Chief of Naval Staff D.K. Joshi declared that the Indian navy was prepared to operate in the South China Sea if called upon to do so. The government subsequently downplayed Joshi’s remarks, but the fact remains that the South China Sea has emerged as a vital sea corridor for India, with more than half the country’s trade currently passing through it. The security of the South China Sea will grow even more important to New Delhi in the years to come as India looks to link itself to East Asian supply chains and […]

For roughly a decade now, I’ve been advocating that America needs to be unsentimental in choosing its military allies for the 21st century. Europe and Japan are aging and seem increasingly less willing to protect their interests abroad, while India and China are becoming budding superpowers with global interests that, to a stunning degree, overlap with America’s. Most pointedly, we live in an age of “frontier integration” triggered by globalization’s rapid advance, a process in which China and India, and not the “old” West, are the two rising pillars. So it makes sense for America to focus future alliance-building efforts […]

It was months in the making, persistently delayed and then twice rescheduled. But when British Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech on the future of the U.K.’s relationship with the European Union finally arrived late last month, at least it did not lack ambition. Cameron hopes to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and push forward a process of reform for the whole union. His aim is to secure a looser relationship with a streamlined Europe, one that all but the more strident europhobes in his party and the public would prefer to full departure from the bloc. Should the Conservatives […]

With middle-class dissatisfaction growing and her modus operandi becoming better understood, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is finding the crucial challenge of controlling the political narrative in Argentina increasingly difficult, and she may not be able to pin the blame for her country’s woes on outside forces for much longer. That’s a key part of the strategy that has proved so effective for more than a decade of Kirchner administrations, beginning with the late Nestor Kirchner and continuing with his widow, the current president. Every few days, Fernandez faces a new controversy, and each time she responds by singling out […]