The first two sentences delivered by the U.S. representative at the 3rd session of FfD4 Preparatory Committee (3rd PrepCom) last week were already tough ones: “At the outset, I underscore that the United States is currently evaluating its membership and participation in all international organisations and processes. Thus, we are reserving on the whole draft…
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The current debate on the Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement could be very consequential for the World Trade Organization (WTO) although it is not part of the official calendar of next week’s 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi. …
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The world is grappling with a deadly pandemic unleashed on the planet by the Corona Virus (SARS-CoV-2/ HCoV-19). In its wake, the votaries of globalisation who have been espousing the cause of a borderless world of business with seamless flow of international trade, capital and even human resources across the world seem to be stung by a creepy realization whether the paeans sung by them were all worth the effort. More than the social and cultural aspects of globalisation, its economic manifestation in the form of product market integration with concomitant cross-border value chains has been credited with having contributed richly to the growth of the global and national economies. Today, more than half the world has locked down their economic, social, political and cultural activities to arrest the spread of the corona virus that has already infected nearly eight million patients world-wide and claimed over four hundred thousand lives as on the 15 June, 2020.…
The leaders of the G20 will meet on 30 November and 1 December in Buenos Aires for their annual summit. They need to acknowledge that the last two years have been characterized by strong headwinds for the world economy. This time, however, it is not a mixture of poor macroeconomic policies and bad business decisions – as in 2008 when they met in Washington for their first summit – that endangers the well-being of billions of citizens around the globe. This time the threat stems from deliberate political decisions, in particular on trade.
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We are a long way from 2015. That year, the world committed to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate – promising to end extreme poverty, address corrosive inequality, boost peace and prosperity, and stop climate change.
Now in 2018, we already look back at 2015 with nostalgia. This was the high water mark of multilateralism, brought low by the rise of populism and ‘illiberal democracy’. Suddenly, it seems, we are forced to find ways of rescuing the global rules-based order.
