Trade Archive

The atmosphere during Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s rare visit to China last week, the first by a Japanese leader since 2011, was loaded with historical meaning. Oct. 23, two days before Abe arrived in Beijing, was the 40th anniversary of the two countries’ Treaty of Peace and Friendship coming into effect. That agreement formally ended their state of war. The anniversary has now become a convenient touchstone for two countries seeking to normalize relations following a multi-year chill, mainly over disputed islands in the East China Sea and sensitive historical issues. And in the 1970s, as in 2018, it was […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR’s newsletter and engagement editor, Benjamin Wilhelm, curates the top news and analysis from China written by the experts who follow it. On Monday, Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations suspended two exchange programs with Beijing-based Renmin University after students there were punished for their labor rights activism. According to the Financial Times, it is the first case in years of a foreign university suspending ties with a Chinese counterpart due to concerns over academic freedom. Renmin students faced various forms of punishment—including surveillance and threats of suspension—after they participated in labor protests this […]

The Trump administration is set to reimpose economic sanctions on Iran next week that target its oil sector, after having reimposed sanctions on other sectors of the Iranian economy in August. But they will target Iran only indirectly. Many of those sanctions will be aimed at firms and financial institutions in Europe, Japan, Turkey and other allied countries, as well as China, India and elsewhere. Unlike the United Nations sanctions that helped bring Iran to the negotiating table and led to the international agreement to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the new U.S. sanctions will be unilateral, extraterritorial—often called “secondary”—and […]

Cambodia has made significant progress on reducing poverty since its transition to democracy in the 1990s, yet millions still remain at risk of falling back into destitution given the nation’s shaky dependence on foreign money, both from trading partners and aid donors. That’s why many Cambodians will be desperately hoping the European Union’s recent threat to suspend valuable trade preferences does not actually come to fruition. In early October, the EU announced that it was formally looking into removing Cambodia’s special trade status, known as “Everything But Arms,” which gives developing nations duty-free access to export into Europe. European Trade […]

On Oct. 18, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Uzbekistan for the first meeting of the newly established Uzbekistan-Russia Interregional Cooperation Forum. Putin attended the symbolic groundbreaking ceremony of a new $11 billion nuclear power plant, signing investment deals totaling $25 billion, mostly in the energy sector. The visit was a clear illustration of how significantly Uzbekistan has changed since the death in August 2016 of Islam Karimov, the country’s first post-Soviet president who ruled for 27 years. Under Karimov, Uzbekistan pursued a path of outward isolation and inward repression. His successor, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has slowly opened Uzbekistan up […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR’s newsletter and engagement editor, Benjamin Wilhelm, curates the top news and analysis from China written by the experts who follow it. The United States Department of Justice announced the extradition of a Chinese intelligence official to the U.S. on economic espionage charges last Wednesday. It is the first time a Chinese government spy has been extradited to the U.S., according to The Washington Post. Yanjun Xu, a deputy division director in the Ministry of State Security, China’s main spy agency, traveled to Belgium last spring, believing he was set to receive “proprietary information about jet […]

The World Trade Organization’s woes began long before Donald Trump was inaugurated as America’s president, and many countries are to blame. The latest round of global trade negotiations has been stalled for a decade and there is still no clear way out of the impasse. India insists on resolving long-standing problems, such as trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, before the WTO can begin to negotiate any new issues. China has no interest in taking a leading role on many pressing issues, such as regulations on state-owned enterprises, which might impinge on its industrial policies. Both Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump undermined […]

Much of the world’s waste used to wind up in China and Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Vietnam, but in recent years, they have all cracked down on imports of waste and recyclables. This has caused a major disruption in the global waste trade, leading to massive accumulations of plastic, cardboard and electronic waste in developed countries like the United States. According to Derek Kellenberg, an environmental economist at the University of Montana, this may be a turning point that forces the world’s major producers to finally reckon with the true social costs of waste. In an interview with […]

In a speech last week that seemed as much an effort to catch up to recent events as a formal declaration of policy, Vice President Mike Pence put Beijing on notice that “the United States of America has adopted a new approach to China.” The address, delivered at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, for the most part covered familiar ground in terms of American grievances with the bilateral relationship. Having spent the past 20 years seeking to invite China into the international order as a “responsible stakeholder,” the U.S. has now run out of patience over Beijing’s unfair […]

“It’s not NAFTA redone. It’s a brand new deal,” U.S. President Donald Trump declared triumphantly at the White House last week, announcing the revised free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. Don’t tell Trump, but his brand new deal is really just the Trans-Pacific Partnership with a few tweaks, and many fewer countries than the 12 that signed on before Trump withdrew. American negotiators won concessions in a few areas that were important to them, and made concessions in a few that were important to Mexico and Canada. But the new NAFTA, which Trump clumsily renamed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss rising tensions and the risk of conflict between the U.S. and China. For the Report, Emmanuel Freudenthal talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about why the situation in Cameroon’s Anglophone region is a greater threat to President Paul Biya’s grip on power than the country’s presidential election this Sunday. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The […]

Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency in 2016 based on his celebrity status and his reputation as a maverick businessman, vowing to run the country as he ran his real estate empire. The renegotiation of the trade deal with Mexico and Canada formerly known as NAFTA, announced this weekend, is the latest example of how in one striking way, he has been true to his word. The problem is that Trump was a more successful self-promoter than businessman, and the results are on display in the trade deal as well as other aspects of his foreign policy. Early in his […]

Editor’s note: Every Wednesday, WPR’s newsletter and engagement editor, Benjamin Wilhelm, curates the top news and analysis from China written by the experts who follow it. Much of China is on a weeklong holiday to mark the 69th anniversary of the country’s founding. But while the so-called Golden Week, which kicked off with China’s National Day on Monday, could offer a welcome respite from an especially tumultuous period for U.S.-China relations, there were few signs that tensions might ease in sensitive areas like security and trade. Last Wednesday, U.S. B-52 bombers flew over the South China Sea in what Pentagon […]

Deadlines can be useful in negotiations since they often force sides to act. If there is a difference in the intensity of interest in reaching an agreement, however, leverage shifts to the party less desperate to get a deal. That is evident in the now-successful effort to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Canada clearly wanted to remain part of the deal. But up to the end, Canadian negotiators behaved as though the deadline was not as hard as their American counterparts insisted. President Donald Trump seemed to badly want an agreement that he could tout as a win […]

Was Donald Trump nasty or nice at the United Nations last week? The answer may depend on whether you listened to his comments from Beijing or Tehran. Diplomatic observers expected the American president to look tough at the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. Many predicted that he would strike an especially aggressive tone toward Iran. He didn’t disappoint them, using his U.N. appearance to celebrate his withdrawal from the “horrible” Iranian nuclear deal and attack Tehran’s “agenda of aggression and expansion” in the Middle East. Yet there was something formulaic about his rhetoric, and he made no startlingly […]