Trade Archive

President Barack Obama’s trip to Asia this past week seemed to push the “legacy” cliche button in the minds of editors everywhere. I’ve lost track of how many times I was asked about it, and, embarrassingly, the question took me by surprise the first several times. We’re still six months from the midterms, after all. For right now, at least, a more interesting question to ask might be: In national security and foreign policy, how has Obama set the stage so that he and his team can construct a legacy over the next two years? Presidential administrations always deny that […]

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott pulled off an impressive feat in Asia last week as he embarked on a tour of Japan, South Korea and China, forging free trade agreements and announcing closer security relations on each stop along the way. The conservative Abbott government came to power in 2013 declaring that Australia was “open for business” and promising to fast-track stalled free trade agreements with East Asia’s three economic powerhouses. Accompanied by an unprecedented delegation of more than 600 high-level Australian businesspeople and the premiers of six Australian states as well as the chief minister of the Northern Territories, […]

The first European Union-Africa summit since 2010 was held in Brussels earlier this month. Much of the media focus leading up to the summit was on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s failed bid to instigate a boycott of the meeting by African leaders after his wife was refused a visa to enter Europe. Beyond these headlines, however, the issue of trade relations between the two parties continues to be one of pressing importance. The EU has been negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries since 2002. The final declaration of the Brussels summit this year included […]

This month, four Iranian border guards were freed two months after being kidnapped and allegedly taken into Pakistan by an Iran-based Sunni militant group. In an email interview, Isaac Kfir, a senior researcher at Syracuse University’s Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism and a visiting assistant professor of law and international relations, explained the state of Iran-Pakistan relations. WPR: What has been the recent trajectory of the Iran-Pakistan security relationship, particularly regarding their shared border? Isaac Kfir: Iran and Pakistan work together on some issues and compete on others. The two countries have good cooperation on drug interdiction, as both […]

On March 19, students occupied Taiwan’s legislature to protest President Ma Ying-jeou and his Kuomintang (KMT) government’s handling of the services trade agreement with China (CSSTA). With strong public backing, the protest swelled into what is now known as the Sunflower Movement. The movement won the support of major KMT figures for a compromise that would see the services pact, and any future agreements with China, undergo more thorough—and public—scrutiny. The protest leaders have now announced that they will vacate the legislature on Thursday evening. These dramatic events are forcing a rethink about the very nature of the China-Taiwan relationship. […]

Since the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women and the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995, many governments and international development institutions have expressed their commitment toward gender equality goals. Most development actors and policymakers, however, remain focused on a narrow interpretation of women’s empowerment and often argue for “investing in women and girls” as a means to achieve poverty reduction and GDP growth, rather than as an end in itself and as a matter of social justice. For example, the main argument behind the slogan “gender equality is smart economics” coined by the World Bank […]

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel hosted defense ministers from 10 ASEAN members last week. The informal meeting in Hawaii was the first of its kind, and it came at a time when the United States is trying to build the partnerships necessary for its Asia rebalance strategy. Ian Storey of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore explains in an email that while ASEAN defense ministers have previously met with their U.S. and Chinese counterparts, last week’s meeting was “the first time they have done so outside the region.” A meeting between ASEAN defense ministers and the Chinese defense […]

The new foreign investment law passed unanimously last Saturday by Cuba’s National Assembly is a key component of President Raul Castro’s program to “update” the economy. Castro deemed the law so important that he called the assembly into special session to pass it rather than wait for the regularly scheduled session in July. The new law offers significantly better terms to foreign investors than the 1995 law it replaces, with the aim of boosting direct foreign investment (FDI) in Cuba’s chronically capital-poor economy. Though Cuba’s internal sector reforms have garnered more attention, it was a crisis in the external sector […]