Trade Archive

On Sunday, Feb. 21, Bolivians rejected a referendum that would have allowed long-serving President Evo Morales to run for a fourth term in office, continuing a recent trend across Latin America of citizens voting for change. As the country’s first president of indigenous descent in a nation where between 40 percent and 62 percent of the citizenry self-identify as indigenous, Morales remains popular but is term-limited and must leave office in 2019. The president anticipated victory. What he did not factor in, apparently, was being overtaken by Latin America’s anti-incumbency wave. Since his first election in 2006, Morales has assiduously […]

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has canceled a March trip to Australia in order to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow instead. In an email interview, Michael Koplow, a policy director at the Israel Policy Forum, discussed Israel-Russia relations and the impact of the Syrian conflict. WPR: What has been the recent trajectory of Israel-Russia political, economic and security ties? Michael Koplow: The recent trajectory of Israel-Russia ties has been on the upswing. Vladimir Putin was the first Russian president to visit Israel, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cultivated ties with Russia for a number of reasons. Israel […]

The growing closeness between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) sends some very mixed messages. The California venue for last week’s first-ever U.S.-hosted summit with ASEAN heads of state—the Sunnylands Resort at Rancho Mirage—seemed to illustrate the essential confusion: Is the relationship bright and hopeful, or just illusory? Prior to the summit, U.S. State Department officials were at pains to declare that it was “not about China,” which became more difficult to maintain with the revelation, late in the summit’s proceedings, that Beijing had placed surface-to-air missiles on an island in the South China Sea. […]

On Thursday, the White House announced that President Barack Obama will visit Cuba next month, the first trip there by an American president since 1928. Obama will meet with Cuban President Raul Castro and members of civil society, including dissidents who have criticized Cuba’s human rights record. U.S.-Cuba relations began to thaw in December 2014, when Obama and Castro announced the launch of a normalization process that would break decades of hostility. Last April, the Obama administration removed Cuba from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism List, and in July, the Cuban flag was raised over the embassy in Washington […]

In this special edition of the Trend Lines podcast, WPR Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein and host Peter Dörrie talk about China’s rise as an economic and political power and the implications for Asia and the rest of the world. The discussion coincides with a panel WPR is sponsoring on China’snaval, economic and cyber ambitionsand the implications for the U.S. at the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs on Feb. 19. Listen:Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant articles on WPR: The Challenge of China’s Bid for Cyber Suzerainty China’s Naval Modernization: Where Is It Headed? Do China’s Global Economic Ambitions Really Threaten […]

For more than six decades following India’s independence in 1947, urbanization remained an afterthought for policymakers, who hardly recognized the positive relationship between urban expansion and economic development. It wasn’t until 1984, when Rajiv Gandhi became India’s youngest prime minister and brought with him a new, young brigade of leaders, that those in power began to acknowledge that urbanization could serve India’s economy. Gandhi’s initiatives on urbanization, while new, were nonetheless hesitant. Through the 1990s and the early 2000s, analysts increasingly spoke of India’s “urban turn” and hinted at the beginnings of a serious investment in urban infrastructure and connectivity. […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the potential impact on members’ economies. To be included in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was formally signed last week and now faces national ratification among member states, Vietnam accepted a side agreement outlining various compliance measures for the deal’s labor rights standards. In an email interview, Adam Fforde, professorial fellow at Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, in Melbourne, Australia, discusses the TPP’s likely impact on Vietnam’s political economy. WPR: What are the expected economic benefits for Vietnam from the TPP, and […]

Editor’s note: This article is one of three briefings on China’s rise and its implications for U.S. regional and global interests, coinciding with an upcoming panel, in collaboration with WPR, at the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs on Feb. 17-19 in St. Petersburg, Florida. The second, on China’s naval modernization, will appear Wednesday; the third, on China’s cyber strategy, will appear Friday. Over the course of the past decade, China has been steadily laying the foundation of an international financial and monetary system centered on the yuan. While progress was initially slow, it picked up considerable steam in the […]

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 […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein and host Peter Dörrie discuss the impact of El Niño on South America, Iran’s economy after the end of sanctions, recent elections in Taiwan and upcoming elections in Uganda. For the report, we are joined by Miles Kahler, senior fellow for global governance at the Council on Foreign Relations, who explains the increasing influence of emerging economies on the international stage. Listen: Download: MP3 Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant articles on WPR: El Niño Tests Latin America’s Ability to Adapt to Climate Risks After Sanctions, Rouhani’s Economic Agenda Faces Challenges […]

Thanks to Iran’s speedy compliance with the requirements of its nuclear agreement with the group of world powers known as the P5+1, international economic sanctions on Iran were formally lifted on Jan. 16. Iran’s political leadership upheld its part of the deal so far in order to prevent any delay in lifting sanctions that have crippled its economy. The two most devastating sanctions that were lifted had restricted Iran’s finances and oil exports. These measures reduced Iran’s oil revenues, blocked its foreign assets and nearly paralyzed its foreign trade. Free from those restrictions, Iran has wasted no time in trying […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of falling oil and commodities prices on resource-exporting countries. As a commodities-exporting country deeply linked to the Chinese market, Mongolia faces heightened risks from the current commodities slump and China’s economic slowdown. In an email interview, Jonathan Berkshire Miller, director of the Council on International Policy, discusses the impact of the commodities slump on Mongolia. WPR: How important are commodities for Mongolia’s economy, and what effect have falling commodities prices had on public spending and, by consequence, political stability? Jonathan Berkshire Miller: Commodities, and their prices, […]

Assessments of the largest emerging economies—China, India and Brazil—and their global influence have been as volatile as each of their stock markets. In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the buoyancy of their economies supported both a global recovery and their status as the rising powers of the 21st century. Now, the boom decade after 2001 seems a distant memory. As China’s economy slows from supercharged to respectable growth and rebalancing curbs its demand for commodities, growth in commodity-producing countries, Brazil among them, has slumped. Even India, which surpassed China’s growth rate for the first time in 2015, […]

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 […]

Would anyone like to save Europe from itself? The continent is presently enduring economic weakness, an influx of refugees, rising nationalism and a general sense of insecurity. All too often, its leaders’ collective response to these multiple threats is not to take decisive action but to look around for someone else to do so, echoing the motto of Charles Dickens’ eternal optimist, Mr. Micawber: “Something will turn up.” The range of “somethings” that might dig Europe out of its strategic hole is broad. Russia could become more moderate, easing security fears. Turkey and African states might adopt robust policies to […]