Oliver Griffiths

Trade The Day After Tomorrow

As trailed in my last posting, here is the link to Demetrios Marantis's comments to Monday's conference in London at the start of World Trade Week UK. It has a particular emphasis on making trade work for Least Developed Countries. You can also view Lord Mandelson's opening speech, which includes the launch of a new Global Trade Alert designed to help with the monitoring of government responses to the recession. There will be a launch of the Global Trade Alert in Washington at the German Marshall Fund toward the end of the month. 

Separately our Ambassador appeared on the Fox Business Network this morning in a discussion on protectionism (prompting my discovery at 7 am that the Fox Business Network does not feature among the more than 300 channels that Verizon pipes into my home).  Sometimes you don't know what you're missing.

I liked the op-ed from the President of the Federated Farmers in New Zealand which appeared in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week putting the spotlight on the reintroduction on dairy export subsidies in the US. Of course the EU has, equally regrettably, done something similar. All of which underlines the value of eliminating agricultural export subsidies as part of an overall Doha deal, as agreed at the WTO Ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December 2005. I remember how the EU offer to get rid of export subsidies was talked down at the time as the EU getting maximum value for a diminishing negotiating asset, on the basis that the subsidies were being phased out anyway. The last year has reminded us that trade policy is not a simple (if slow) teleology towards a tariff-free and subsidy-free world and that there is real value in binding in disciplines, whether on subsidies or tariffs, at the WTO.

On the same theme, the Foresight Horizon Scanning Centre in the UK's Government Office of Science has produced a paper setting out four scenarios for world trade between now and 2020. It looks at trade within the broader context of differing degrees of resource abundance and differing degrees of international co-ordination over the next decade. We have been thinking up movie title alternatives for the four scenarios. The two dystopian ones are relatively easy: 'Fragile Alliances' reads like Bladerunner (Traderunner?), 'Deglobalisation' is 1984. The remaining two are harder. The whole concept of the 'Global Citizen' has a Star Trek feel it to.  The response to the 2015 climate disaster in the 'Global Innovation' scenario perhaps makes it The Day After Tomorrow.

Posted at 17:04 10 June 2009 by Oliver Griffiths  |  Comments[0]

World Trade Week UK

This week sees the inaugural World Trade Week UK, which aims to highlight the importance of global trade in creating jobs and growth during these difficult economic times. It’s an idea that draws heavily on FDR’s 1933 initiative to designate the third week of May as National Foreign Trade Week, following up on the promise in his Inaugural Address to ‘spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment’. Actually it is surprising to look at the full text of FDR’s language on international trade in the Inaugural Address, where he sees international trade relations as secondary to national economic recovery - as if the two are somehow separate challenges. 

In advance of World Trade Week UK our Ambassador, Nigel Sheinwald, gave a major speech on trade in Baltimore last week. The speech underlines our on-going concerns about the risks of the global economy being compartmentalised into national boxes.  To take one example, we have been hearing from a number of British companies worried about how the Buy American provisions in the fiscal stimulus are being applied. Under the terms of the Congressional legislation, British companies and goods should not be affected by Buy American in most states because the UK has signed the Government Procurement Agreement.  However it seems that many local decision-makers think that they heard Congress say ‘Buy American. Period.’ As the speech sets out, we have no Buy British equivalent in government procurement rules in the UK and American companies get a substantial portion of government contracts. 

There will be a major international conference on trade in London this week, featuring, among others, Paul Krugman, Jagdish Bhagwati, Lord Mandelson and EU Trade Commissioner Cathy Ashton. Friday afternoon we taped an address by Deputy USTR Demetrios Marantis to the conference. 

It will then be interesting to see the US’s trade data for April which comes out on Tuesday. There were some signs of recovering transatlantic trade volumes in the March data - though the only press angle seemed to be the on-going obsession with the size of the trade deficit. Let’s hope for some more green shoots. 

Posted at 10:10 08 June 2009 by Oliver Griffiths  |  Comments[0]