Councils and NHS trusts to be blocked from boycotting Israeli products

February 15, 2016, 5:08 am

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Penalties for breaking new procurement rules – attacked by Labour for restricting local democracy – could be severe

Councils, NHS trusts and other publicly funded bodies will be prevented from boycotting Israeli goods under new government procurement guidelines.

Matthew Hancock, the Cabinet Office minister, is set to announce the regulations during a visit to Israel, citing concerns that such boycotts can fuel antisemitism.

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Trade policy is no longer just for political nerds: it matters in the UK and US

March 27, 2016, 7:44 am

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Rise of outsiders such as Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn reflects sense of being left behind by globalisation

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have something in common. Both are hostile to the free trade deals that Barack Obama has been negotiating, and both have been campaigning on a platform of putting American workers first.

One thing is certain: if either of these two political insurgents makes it to the White House, there will be no great rush to provide easier access to the world’s biggest market. The agreement that Obama has been seeking with the European Union, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), will be dead in the water.

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Protectionism was a mistake 80 years ago. Is the world now set to repeat it?

April 10, 2016, 1:00 am

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Stubbornly slow growth and bad news from China are pushing world leaders once again towards beggar-thy-neighbour measures to keep out imports

The ghost of 1930s protectionism is looming over the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the Washington-based organisation prepares for its half-yearly meeting on Friday. Ever since the financial crisis led to the biggest global downturn since the Great Depression, finance ministers and central bank governors have comforted themselves with the knowledge that they have avoided the mistakes made eight decades ago.

Back then, tariffs were raised to keep out foreign imports in a series of beggar-thy-neighbour moves designed to safeguard jobs and domestic output. Currency devaluations as countries came off the gold standard simply added to the protectionist pressure.

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IMF forecasts faster global growth but warns of risks ahead

April 14, 2015, 6:00 am

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Growth rate to speed up in next two years but recovery based on falling oil price and easing austerity still at risk from exchange rate shocks, debt and ageing populations

Global growth will step up a gear over the next two years according to the International Monetary Fund, following the collapse in oil prices and the easing of austerity programmes in developed countries.

But the Washington-based organisation warned that the failure to secure a more sustainable recovery following the 2008 financial crash had left the outlook for global growth vulnerable to further economic shocks.

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Borders are closing and banks are in retreat. Is globalisation dead?

May 23, 2015, 8:00 am

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≪ Previous: IMF forecasts faster global growth but warns of risks ahead

In the days before the Great Recession, the liberalisation of world trade seemed a certainty: now fears over ‘hot money’ and migration have changed the mood

Globalisation is under attack. It was meant to be the unstoppable economic force bringing prosperity to rich and poor alike, but that was before the financial crisis ripped up the rulebook.

For the past four years, international trade flows have increased more slowly than global GDP – “an outcome unprecedented in postwar history”, as analyst Michael Pearce of Capital Economics put it in a recent note.

I have always thought that the greatest threat to globalisation is the US

Obama's been a little bit subdued, but he’s not going to want a protectionist legacy

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Making international trade work for the world's poorest

June 30, 2015, 7:27 am

≫ Next: As UN meets to fight poverty, Europe puts up razor wire to keep poor out

≪ Previous: Borders are closing and banks are in retreat. Is globalisation dead?

Much good work already is under way, but there are far more opportunities to ensure that trade helps everyone

Over the past 25 years, an astounding one billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, reducing by more than half the number of those living in such deplorable conditions.

This is great work but we can do even better. In the next 15 years, we believe that we can end extreme poverty. International trade, which has boosted economic growth and improved access to new technologies and innovations, has played a significant role in reducing extreme poverty in the past, and it can do so in the future.

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As UN meets to fight poverty, Europe puts up razor wire to keep poor out

September 20, 2015, 8:42 am

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Sustainable development summit must address inequality that makes people undertake dangerous journeys to the west

The contrast could hardly be sharper. Razor wire fences are being constructed to keep the uprooted poor out of the European Union at the very moment the United Nations meets to agree anti-poverty goals for the next 15 years.

No question, the gathering in New York will be a regular jamboree. There will be mutual backslapping about the progress that has been made over the past 15 years, a good deal of it justified. Countries will solemnly pledge to meet the 17 sustainable development goals, with 169 specific targets, by 2030. They will turn a blind eye to what is happening in Serbia, Hungary, Croatia and Austria.

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World trade has an important role in combating climate change

November 23, 2015, 3:18 am

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≪ Previous: As UN meets to fight poverty, Europe puts up razor wire to keep poor out

We must improve the dissemination of and access to climate-friendly technologies, goods and services which support the transition towards a low-carbon economy

In a few weeks’ time world leaders will have the opportunity to usher in a new era of multilateral cooperation on climate change. This starts with the UN climate change conference in Paris, but it does not end there. Building momentum to tackle climate change is a common challenge for us all – individually and institutionally. The broader international community, including the WTO, has to play its part.

Like most economic activity, trade is often linked to carbon emissions, but the world cannot stop trading – not least as trade is essential in achieving many other shared goals. Trade can help to improve the efficiency of production, it can improve food security and, above all, it has proven to be one of the best anti-poverty tools in history. Trade played a key role in helping us reach the millennium development goal to cut extreme poverty by half – and it is a cross-cutting element in many of the new sustainable development goals agreed at the UN in September, so this work will continue.

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Does Doha trade talks' failure suggest second age of globalisation is over?

November 29, 2015, 5:27 am

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≪ Previous: World trade has an important role in combating climate change

Climate has changed since WTO round began in 2001, with extreme nationalism rising again on back of economic hardship triggered by system failure

It’s November 2001. The terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11 are still fresh and raw. While George Bush plots revenge, a meeting of trade ministers takes place in the Gulf state of Qatar.

The gathering has two purposes. At one level, it is intended as a show of global solidarity with the US, a signal that the international community can unite in its opposition to fanaticism. But trade ministers also think the time is right to break down barriers to the free movement of goods and services around the world. After all, the last successful round of trade liberalisation negotiations was completed eight years earlier in 1993.

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World Trade Organisation: 20 years of talks and deadlock

December 14, 2015, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: Doha is dead. Hopes for fairer global trade shouldn’t die, too

≪ Previous: Does Doha trade talks' failure suggest second age of globalisation is over?

WTO meetings in Seattle, Qatar, Cancun, Hong Kong, Potsdam, Davos - but still no agreement on the Doha round

January 1995: The World Trade Organisation is formed after the Uruguay round trade negotiations spanning 1986-94 were completed.

December 1999 - World trade talks in the US city of Seattle collapsewhen developing countries walk out after accusing the industrialised countries of failing to open their markets to clothing and food - the most important exports from poor countries. Outside the talks, riot police use red pepper gas to tackle thousands of anti-free trade activists as the biggest demonstration in the US since the end of the Vietnam war erupted into violence. Ministers tell WTO director general, Mike Moore, to work out a way of relaunching the talks. But no progress is expected until at least after a US presidential election in November 2000.

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Doha is dead. Hopes for fairer global trade shouldn’t die, too

December 19, 2015, 11:05 pm

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≪ Previous: World Trade Organisation: 20 years of talks and deadlock

It’s a sign of how Doha failed that leftwing protestors no longer target it as a symbol of capitalism. But some good things will fade with it

Over the past few days, trade ministers from scores of countries have spent hours flogging the long-dead horse that is the Doha round of global trade talks in Nairobi – and hardly anyone noticed. The World Trade Organisation, which convened last week’s conference, was once regularly targeted by protesters as the secretive, all-powerful puppet master of global capitalism.

Back in 1999, in the innocent days before the sub-prime crisis laid bare the sinister power of international finance, WTO talks in Seattle broke down amid clouds of tear gas, as anti-capitalist protesters expressed their fury at the rigged rules of the global marketplace, which, as they saw it, entrenched the wealth of the rich and excluded the poor. Yet last week’s gathering, attended by Britain’s Lord (Francis) Maude, barely registered with the world’s angry young radicals, who have turned their attention to bashing bankers – through the Occupy movement, for example.

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In 2016, let's hope for better trade agreements - and the death of TPP

January 10, 2016, 4:36 am

≫ Next: Trade policy is no longer just for political nerds: it matters in the UK and US

≪ Previous: Doha is dead. Hopes for fairer global trade shouldn’t die, too

The Trans-Pacific Partnership may turn out to be the worst trade agreement in decades

Last year was a memorable one for the global economy. Not only was overall performance disappointing, but profound changes – both for better and for worse – occurred in the global economic system.

Most notable was the Paris climate agreement reached last month. By itself, the agreement is far from enough to limit the increase in global warming to the target of 2ºC above the pre-industrial level. But it did put everyone on notice: the world is moving, inexorably, toward a green economy. One day not too far off, fossil fuels will be largely a thing of the past. So anyone who invests in coal now does so at his or her peril. With more green investments coming to the fore, those financing them will, we should hope, counterbalance powerful lobbying by the coal industry, which is willing to put the world at risk to advance its shortsighted interests.

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Trade policy is no longer just for political nerds: it matters in the UK and US

March 27, 2016, 7:44 am

≫ Next: Protectionism was a mistake 80 years ago. Is the world now set to repeat it?

≪ Previous: In 2016, let's hope for better trade agreements - and the death of TPP

Rise of outsiders such as Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn reflects sense of being left behind by globalisation

↧

Protectionism was a mistake 80 years ago. Is the world now set to repeat it?

April 10, 2016, 1:00 am

≫ Next: IMF forecasts faster global growth but warns of risks ahead

≪ Previous: Trade policy is no longer just for political nerds: it matters in the UK and US

Stubbornly slow growth and bad news from China are pushing world leaders once again towards beggar-thy-neighbour measures to keep out imports

↧

IMF forecasts faster global growth but warns of risks ahead

April 14, 2015, 6:00 am

≫ Next: Borders are closing and banks are in retreat. Is globalisation dead?

≪ Previous: Protectionism was a mistake 80 years ago. Is the world now set to repeat it?

Growth rate to speed up in next two years but recovery based on falling oil price and easing austerity still at risk from exchange rate shocks, debt and ageing populations

↧

Borders are closing and banks are in retreat. Is globalisation dead?

May 23, 2015, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Making international trade work for the world's poorest

≪ Previous: IMF forecasts faster global growth but warns of risks ahead

In the days before the Great Recession, the liberalisation of world trade seemed a certainty: now fears over ‘hot money’ and migration have changed the mood

Globalisation is under attack. It was meant to be the unstoppable economic force bringing prosperity to rich and poor alike, but that was before the financial crisis ripped up the rulebook.

I have always thought that the greatest threat to globalisation is the US

Obama's been a little bit subdued, but he’s not going to want a protectionist legacy

↧

Making international trade work for the world's poorest

June 30, 2015, 7:27 am

≫ Next: As UN meets to fight poverty, Europe puts up razor wire to keep poor out

≪ Previous: Borders are closing and banks are in retreat. Is globalisation dead?

Much good work already is under way, but there are far more opportunities to ensure that trade helps everyone

Over the past 25 years, an astounding one billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, reducing by more than half the number of those living in such deplorable conditions.

↧

As UN meets to fight poverty, Europe puts up razor wire to keep poor out

September 20, 2015, 8:42 am

≫ Next: World trade has an important role in combating climate change

≪ Previous: Making international trade work for the world's poorest

Sustainable development summit must address inequality that makes people undertake dangerous journeys to the west

↧

World trade has an important role in combating climate change

November 23, 2015, 3:18 am

≫ Next: Does Doha trade talks' failure suggest second age of globalisation is over?

≪ Previous: As UN meets to fight poverty, Europe puts up razor wire to keep poor out

We must improve the dissemination of and access to climate-friendly technologies, goods and services which support the transition towards a low-carbon economy

↧

Does Doha trade talks' failure suggest second age of globalisation is over?

November 29, 2015, 5:27 am

≫ Next: World Trade Organisation: 20 years of talks and deadlock

≪ Previous: World trade has an important role in combating climate change

Climate has changed since WTO round began in 2001, with extreme nationalism rising again on back of economic hardship triggered by system failure

It’s November 2001. The terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11 are still fresh and raw. While George Bush plots revenge, a meeting of trade ministers takes place in the Gulf state of Qatar.

↧

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