Chinese New Year celebrations kick off on January 28. Despite slowing growth, Chinese consumers will goose their economy buying new holiday clothes, food and drinks for gatherings, and gifts for relatives for the holiday.
We can – and do – talk about “America trading with China,” and about “Germany having a comparative advantage in the brewing of beer.” The very notion of “international trade” causes us to miss the essential reality of trade, which is always flesh-and-blood individuals bargaining and exchanging with each other in ways that each person judges to be in his or her best interest.
Trade has been a remarkable engine of economic growth and development, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty since the birth of the modern trade system in Bretton Woods more than six decades ago. But how can a country trade sustainably, and deliver not only balanced economic benefits to its citizens, but also strengthen social capital and provide responsible environmental stewardship?
Globally, e-commerce sales are projected to surpass $3.5 trillion within the next five years. China and the U.S. account for over 55 percent of global e-commerce, but digital consumption is growing around the world even in markets that still heavily operate on a cash-on-demand basis, like India. The major American e-commerce platforms Amazon and eBay are growing their share in overseas markets but they face stiff competition from companies vying for new online shoppers around the world.
The WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which removes tariffs on information and communication technologies (ICTs), got an overdue upgrade last year when 24 participants representing 53 WTO members agreed to nearly double the products included in the agreement.
MTTS Asia’s husband and wife co-founders set out to meet a healthcare gap in Vietnam, but they soon found they needed to scale by selling greater volumes in more markets. They are working to overcome non-tariff barriers to break into markets where low-cost innovative medical technologies are most needed.
Thanks to international sales and partnerships, Batik Boutique empowers more than a dozen female artisans—who set their own wages and hours—to sell their creations to a global audience.
In the 1980s, the southern Chinese coastal city of Shenzhen was not much more than a small fishing village, home to some 30,000 hearty souls eking out a living barely above the subsistence level.
World trade is a major driver of the global economy. According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), trade accounted for 30 percent of total global economic output in 2014, up from 20 percent in 1995. As the world has become increasingly globalized, trade has grown dramatically as a share of total global output.