Trade Archive

According to the latest poll, released Wednesday, on the British referendum on European Union membership, 45 percent of Britons are in favor of remaining in the EU, while 38 percent are in favor of leaving. While the “remain” camp maintains a significant lead, support for the so-called Brexit is growing, with the “leave” campaign gaining 2 percent in the past month. In Scotland, the story is different. According to the same poll, over 56 percent of Scots want to remain in the EU. Pro-EU sentiment in Scotland has been consistent over the past eight months, with some polls putting support […]

South Korea’s ruling conservative Saenuri Party is looking for answers after a crushing loss earlier this month in legislative elections. Led by President Park Geun-hye, the Saenuri Party managed to win only 122 of the National Assembly’s 300 seats, falling far short of the majority that many predicted. The opposition fared well, with the liberal Minjoo Party winning 123 seats and the left-wing People’s Party winning 38 seats. The National Assembly is now effectively deadlocked, with opposition parties controlling Park’s ability to pass legislation. Her party’s loss is a stunning reversal and will reshape the political landscape in South Korea […]

For most of 2015, it looked as though Nguyen Tan Dung, Vietnam’s prime minister since 2006, would succeed in his audacious bid to succeed Nguyen Phu Trong as the head of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). In the end, however, he was outmaneuvered in skirmishes over party rules, and undone by a whispering campaign that painted him as a dangerous opportunist. The contest was over even before the party’s 12th Congress convened on Jan. 21, 2016. Contrary to the dominant narrative in international media coverage, the showdown in Hanoi had very little to do with how to handle ties […]

The Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba ended Tuesday, April 19 with First Secretary Raul Castro declaring that the “principal tasks” of the party going forward are “the development of the national economy, along with the struggle for peace and ideological firmness.” That neatly summed up the major themes discussed by the 1,000 delegates during the previous three days, and the challenges the party faces on all three fronts as it manages normalizing ties with the United States and opening up its economy while preserving the state’s socialist identity. The economy was the main focus of the conclave, […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the potential impact on members’ economies. After strong earthquakes in northern Japan over the weekend, the Diet, Japan’s parliament, decided to delay ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in order to focus on disaster relief and recovery. In an email interview, Yorizumi Watanabe, a professor in the faculty of policy management at Keio University, discussed the benefits and drawbacks of TPP membership for Japan. WPR: What are the expected economic benefits and potential downsides for Japan from the TPP, and who are the expected […]

When Brazil’s lower house voted Sunday in favor of launching impeachment proceedings to unseat President Dilma Rousseff, it loosened one more rock in what has recently seemed like an avalanche of disastrous news for Latin America’s left. There’s no question that the left, which in the not-very-distant past appeared unstoppable, has been on the receiving end of voters’ frustrations with all that ails the region. And yet, observers taking the measure of Latin American politics routinely overlook another part of the picture: Politicians of all stripes are getting battered, beaten and rejected by a restive public. Latin American voters are […]

Just two months ahead of a referendum on the so-called Brexit, the prospects of a British exit from the European Union have sent any number of economists back to their computers to weigh how it would affect the country’s economy. Most seem to think that exit is a bad idea—at least that is the conclusion reached by more than three-quarters of the 100-plus economists polled by the Financial Times. But the British public, as it prepares to vote, is hardly thinking about economics. Instead, matters of sovereignty and culture take precedence. The people want to protect the nation’s borders from […]

The recent publication of the so-called Panama Papers—a trove of 11 million leaked confidential documents from the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama City—and the earlier publication of what might be called the Offshore Papers—2.5 million documents linked to the Singapore-based Portcullis law firm and the British Virgin Islands-based Commonwealth Trust Ltd.—have revealed a large number of offshore shell companies owned or linked to individuals and companies in either China or Hong Kong. Although there are legitimate uses for such shell companies, their secretive nature, combined with reports of vast outflows of capital from China, create suspicions that these companies […]

Last month, Tanzanian authorities confiscated the passports of Kenyan officials who were in Tanzania with a team of Ugandan officials working on an analysis of proposed routes for a multibillion-dollar oil pipeline, denying them access to the port of Tanga. In an email interview, Jonathan Markham, an upstream analyst with GlobalData, discussed the dispute between Kenya and Tanzania over the proposed pipeline to export Ugandan oil. WPR: What are the proposed pipeline routes from Uganda, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each route? Jonathan Markham: A range of possible pipeline routes to ports has been proposed, including Lamu […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the potential impact on members’ economies. WPR: What are the expected economic benefits and potential downsides for Brunei from the TPP? Joshua Kurlantzick: Brunei’s economy, heavily dependent on petroleum and petroleum products, needs to become more diversified over the next two to three decades. That is absolutely critical for Brunei to survive as a high-income country that offers extremely lavish benefits for its citizens. The low price of oil is already taking an enormous toll. The government may be implementing harsher versions of Shariah […]

Argentina is the new darling of Latin America. Just over four months into his term, President Mauricio Macri is taking every step to put the welcome mat out for the international community, and the United States in particular. The Obama administration has reciprocated in kind. It’s a new era, and the future is bright for the bilateral relationship, as well as for Macri’s domestic standing. Gone are the days of antagonistic relations. Now, U.S.-Argentine relations are being advanced on multiple fronts—from trade facilitation to climate change and global health. Even before Obama’s state visit in late March, Washington had already […]

The Philippines’ upcoming presidential election in May comes at a critical time for Southeast Asia’s second-most-populous country and fifth-largest economy. After decades of anemic growth rates, the Philippines seems to have begun to turn a corner over the past six years under reform-minded President Benigno Aquino III. Yet as Filipinos prepare to go to the polls, it is unclear if the next government will be able to both sustain the progress made thus far as well as confront challenges old and new in the political, economic and security realms. Breaking With the Past Although the Philippines has been a democracy […]

On Jan. 6, Djibouti announced it was severing relations with Iran inresponse to attacks on Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic missions in Tehran, following the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric by Saudi authorities. Shortly after, a joke appeared on Telegram, an instant messaging app popular among Iranians: “One good thing that the snapping of ties with Saudi Arabia taught me is geography. At least now I know where Djibouti is.” Although many Iranians have since dismissed the tiny Horn of Africa state as an inconsequential actor, it was not that long ago that Tehran sought to expand its engagement with small […]

The rise of a global middle class has been one of globalization’s great victories, but the surge in income and consumption in the developing world may be more of a temporary anomaly than a long-term trajectory. Some developing countries have ridden a commodities super-cycle to middle-class status, but most never made it or were far too late with the investments that might have converted the boon into more sustainable growth paths. Commodities are cyclical, and the global middle class may prove to be so as well. From 2001 to 2011, there was an unprecedented surge in the number of people […]

Last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Czech Republic, where he signed more than 30 deals worth nearly $4 billion. In an email interview, Richard Turcsanyi, the deputy director of the Institute for Asian Studies, Bratislava, discussed Chinese investment in Central and Eastern Europe. WPR: How extensive is Chinese investment in Central and Eastern Europe, and what factors are driving China’s investment strategy there? Richard Turcsanyi: To begin with, it is extremely difficult to establish unequivocally the amount of investments from one country in another’s economy. Various statistical sources notoriously show differences. Putting together the numbers from a range […]

AMSTERDAM—In the hours that followed the explosive revelations known as the Panama Papers, reverberations from the giant data drop were felt around the globe. After all, the 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, leaked anonymously to International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, implicate rich and powerful people from practically every country on Earth as holders of offshore shell companies that are often used for tax evasion purposes. But while the power from the leaks to discredit prominent individuals extended across practically every nation and every system of government, reaction to the revelations was far from uniform. The differences […]

Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision, which he articulated in recent interviews with The New York Times and The Washington Post, has been greeted by many international affairs pundits with horror, derision and disdain. One thing it should not be, however, is dismissed. To be sure, Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, expresses his views in a provocative and confrontational manner. The views themselves certainly stand in stark contrast to current U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy, a product of more than 70 years of evolution since World War II. Nevertheless, though iconoclastic, they are not quite as unprecedented as many […]