PHNOM PENH—Conservative forces have strengthened their grip in Vietnam after the ruling Communist Party, late last month, elected its incumbent general-secretary to a second five-year term in the country’s top political office. Analysts say the reappointment of Nguyen Phu Trong, 71, will put a brake on political and economic reforms, but it is unlikely to significantly alter the balance of the country’s crucial relationships with China and the United States. The decision also spelled an end to the ambitions of the reformist Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who mounted a short-lived challenge for the Community Party’s top post before its [...]
After the collapse of multilateral trade talks at the World Trade Organization in Geneva in 2008, governments around the world went back to the drawing board to devise new trade strategies. As a second-best solution, trade officials increasingly looked to bilateral and plurilateral trade negotiations to generate commercial opportunities for domestic businesses and strengthen their economic and geopolitical positions in regions of strategic importance. In anticipation of the failure of the WTO’s Doha Round, European Union leaders had already ended, in 2006, the EU moratorium on bilateral trade talks and made concluding comprehensive trade and investment agreements with emerging and [...]
Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the potential impact on members’ economies. Lukewarm industry support in the United States for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has put the ratification of the 12-nation trade deal by Congress into question. In an email interview, Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, discussed the potential benefits and downsides of the TPP for the U.S. WPR: What economic benefits is the U.S. expected to see from its participation in the TPP? Edward Alden: The short-term benefits are likely to be modest. [...]
