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These are the United States’ most exported products
Tuesday 15th of October 2019
Silicon Valley may be the tech capital of the world but physical goods still account for around two-thirds of US exports, new figures show.
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In the digital era, tax, trade and competition rules need an upgrade
Friday 11th of October 2019
The benefits of digitalization are clear and welcome. Yet popular debate is growing worldwide on how best to tax and regulate digital businesses to optimize economic and societal outcomes. Because digital activities are so often borderless, actions taken in one country can spill over into others. These actions heavily influence the trade and investment decisions of many businesses, but all the more for those with geographically mobile digital footprints. Let’s look at six live areas of debate.
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This is why retail is such a sore point in India-US trade relations
Friday 4th of October 2019
The relationship between India and the United States has been described as one of the most important of the 21st century.
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4 ways climate change is opening the Arctic up for business
Friday 27th of September 2019
This picture of a dog sled in Greenland went viral around the globe.
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The ‘new’ economics of trade agreements
Tuesday 24th of September 2019
Negotiations at the multilateral, regional and bilateral levels have been remarkably successful at reducing traditional barriers to international trade in the post-war period (Bown and Crowley 2016). With this success, the trade community has shifted its attention to various non-tariff barriers that leave world markets still far from integrated. Among the non-tariff barriers that receive the most scrutiny are impediments to trade that arise from differences in domestic regulations, or what Sykes (1999a, 1999b) has termed “regulatory heterogeneity”.
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China is leading the world in sustainable development
Tuesday 24th of September 2019
To its credit, China is focusing on sustainable development at a point when its per capita output is barely more than one-third the level in the so-called advanced economies. A relatively poor country has made a conscious choice to shift its focus from the quantity of economic growth to its quality.
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It’s time to bring together global trade and climate action and let them help each other
Monday 23rd of September 2019
It has been four years since the Paris Accord was agreed, and the world’s climate change strategy needs a new infusion of energy (pardon the pun). The plans submitted by countries to the UN – the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – do not sum1 to anywhere near the level of ambition required to achieve the Accord’s 2˚C target, let alone the 1.5˚C goal the IPCC has recommended is most appropriate (IPCC 2018).
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What can Euroscepticism teach the world?
Monday 23rd of September 2019
Recent successes of populist movements in Europe might seem to reflect eroded trust in the EU’s institutions. This column asks what global lessons can be drawn from recent research on Euroscepticism at the ECB and elsewhere. It argues that taking citizens’ concerns seriously and addressing salient issues, building on a sense of togetherness, and caring about public trust should inspire a course of action at the global level. Insufficient progress along these dimensions has played a key role not only in Brexit, but also in the backlash against the multilateral world order underpinning globalisation.
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Services are the hidden side of the US-China trade war
Friday 20th of September 2019
Discussions about the trade war between the United States and China have largely focused on goods. This is not surprising, given that tariffs have been the most visible weapon in this war. Tariffs apply to goods, not services – hence the focus on products. However, that misses a big, or maybe the biggest, part of the picture.
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Trade uncertainty has risen at an alarming rate. This is why
Wednesday 18th of September 2019
Tariff hikes, tariff threats, and tariff retaliations have become a major source of economic uncertainty, stock market volatility and concerns about the global outlook (e.g. Blanchard 2019, Crowley 2019, Evenett and Fritz 2019, Fajgelbaum et al. 2019, Jacks and Novy 2019). This column draws on three initiatives that aim to quantify the rise in trade policy uncertainty and its role in stock market volatility.
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Trade uncertainty hangs over the global economy. This new index explains what that means for you
Tuesday 17th of September 2019
Rising trade uncertainty is cited as a driving factor for “sluggish global growth” in the current issue of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, which describes the state of the world economy.
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How Africa could become an example of international cooperation
Thursday 12th of September 2019
African countries’ commitment to multilateralism has often gone unnoticed. But, at a time when the world is increasingly turning its back on shared institutions, this could change, with Africa emerging as a vocal – and empowered – champion of multilateralism at the regional, continental, and global levels.
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The world’s economy is in trouble. Here’s how to fix it
Monday 9th of September 2019
Escalating trade tensions are taking a toll on the global economy and are partly responsible for the recent downward revisions to our growth forecasts for 2019-20.
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‘This is Africa’s century’ – what we learned at the World Economic Forum in Cape Town 2019
Friday 6th of September 2019
Leaders who gathered to discuss the future of Africa this year had a rallying point – something they could agree was reason to be hopeful: the ratification of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Years of talks have finally yielded an agreement to bring down trade barriers, boost economies and unite countries which historically have had stronger links with European, American or Asian powers than their own neighbours.
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Africa’s new free trade area is promising, yet full of hurdles
Friday 6th of September 2019
The African Union has launched the operational phase of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which will be the world’s largest free trade area by number of countries once it’s fully up and running.
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How Africa can secure its long-term economic growth
Wednesday 4th of September 2019
In recent weeks we have seen investors discarding riskier assets for perceived safe havens, such as government bonds, due to escalating trade tensions between China and the United States, slowing global growth and volatile commodity markets. Trade frictions and weak global demand have generated a global manufacturing slump, as shown by a global manufacturing index produced by JPMorgan and IHS Markit. Further, a no-deal Brexit—which seems increasingly likely—could deepen global economic woes.
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The forgotten heroes of the economy: why better warehouses will be key to Africa’s growth
Tuesday 3rd of September 2019
Africa contains many of the world’s fastest growing economies, but an acute infrastructure gap is constraining growth. The African Development Bank estimates that investment of $130-170 billion per year is needed to tackle the continent’s lack of quality roads, warehouses, power and other infrastructure.
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4 ways to become a ‘business baobab’ on the African economic landscape
Monday 2nd of September 2019
The ratification of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) on 7 July is a major milestone in the integration of Africa’s markets – and a big opportunity for business. Provided critical parts of the agreement are finalized in time, countries are due to commence trading under the AfCFTA on 1 July 2020. That will create new impetus for investment, trade and industrialization across Africa.
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How can we get better at forecasting financial instability
Friday 30th of August 2019
“It’s awful. Why did nobody see it coming?” asked Queen Elizabeth II in November 2008 during a visit to the London School of Economics, wondering why nobody had predicted the Global Financial Crisis. The bewilderment wasn’t unique to the British monarchy; across the world, many asked the same question.
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Africa is aiming to create the world’s largest trading bloc. It won’t succeed without women
Friday 30th of August 2019
Trade activity is rooted in basic supply and demand. The female population is estimated to account for 50% of Africa’s total population, and so it is essential to consider women when deliberating on implementation of crucial policies such as the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement. The AfCFTA aims to create a single continental market for goods and services in member nations of the African Union. It is expected to be the largest global trade bloc, consolidating a market of 1.3 billion consumers with a combined GDP of about $3.3 trillion.
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This is what a no-deal Brexit would mean for South Africa
Thursday 29th of August 2019
The possibility of Britain crashing out of the European Union without divorce papers on October 31 is becoming more of a probability as the day draws nearer. What would this mean for South Africa?
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Southeast Asian countries are realising the importance of high-skilled immigration
Wednesday 28th of August 2019
A key vision of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is to establish a globally competitive region with a single market and production base—one that embraces the free flow of goods, services, investment, and skilled labor. Goods and capitals are already flowing within the region. The more challenging problem is to improve intra-regional labor mobility.
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A vegan and animal cruelty-free fund will start trading on the Stock Exchange
Wednesday 28th of August 2019
An investment fund designed for animal rights advocates and environmentalists, the first of its kind according to financial experts, is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) next month.
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What caused the decline of US manufacturing employment in recent decades?
Friday 16th of August 2019
One of the most contentious aspects of globalisation is its impact on national labour markets. This is particularly true for advanced economies facing the emergence and integration of large, low-wage, and export-driven countries into the global trading system. Contributing to this controversy, between 1990 and 2011 the US manufacturing sector lost one out of every three jobs. A body of research, including recent work by Bloom et al. (2019), Fort et al. (2018) and Autor et al. (2013), has attempted to understand this decline in manufacturing employment. The focus of this research has been on two broad explanations. First, this period could have coincided with intensive investments in labour-saving technology by US firms, thereby resulting in reduced demand for domestic manufacturing labour. Second, the production of manufacturing goods may have increasingly occurred abroad, also leading to less demand for domestic labour.
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Moving beyond remittances to help the world’s poor
Wednesday 14th of August 2019
In 2002, the Nobel laureate economist Thomas Sargent and François Velde, now a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, published The Big Problem of Small Change. The book’s title was inspired by the observations of economic historian Carlo Cipolla on the functioning of the medieval commodity-money system – particularly its persistent failure from the twelfth century onward to prevent shortages of small-denomination coins used mainly by the poor.