Who and What is the G20?
What’s important about these summits is not the prepared statements delivered at the main table, but the frank discussions and informal meetings that take place in the corridors and meeting rooms around the main conference.
Posts
Havana Club With a Twist of Trade
Among the many casualties of the 1958 Cuban revolution was the clear rights to Havana Club rum, which has been tied up in a decades-long trade dispute involving the United States, Cuba, and the European Union.
Energy Trade and GATT Rules: Is Something Missing?
Trade in hydrocarbons, fissionable materials and cross-border transmission of electricity largely take place outside the multilateral trading system. Two key developments may now lead to convergence between the energy business and the rules of the WTO.
Retaliation: Why Raising Tariffs Becomes a Food Fight
Although the steel and aluminum tariffs are promoted by the Trump administration as a strategy to seek fairness for those industries, the tariffs will incite retaliation by trading partners, imposing significant costs on large numbers of U.S. producers and consumers who have nothing to do with these industries’ grievances.
Super Bowl Broadcast: Who Has the Rights?
Sports fans around the world have so many new platforms and formats to enjoy premium sporting events, that income from the sale of broadcasting and media rights far surpasses revenue from ticket sales in most sports. Unlike in football, the rules of this game are still being written.
What is President Trump Thinking on Trade?
It would be a guessing game to try to predict what the president might do specifically on trade in 2018. Whatever he decides, there are trends morphing the trading system even as the U.S. Government works to figure out its role in shaping it.
The WTO Supports Economic Resolutions
New WTO members Afghanistan and Liberia are cheerleaders for other countries seeking WTO membership, including Iraq, Somalia and Timor-Leste. These countries are resolved to rebuild their post-conflict economies and believe that making commitments in the WTO will undergird necessary, but difficult, economic reforms at home.
Join the Trade Club
The WTO’s Accessions Intelligence Portal contains a bevy of information on the accession process, the status of more than twenty governments in the process of becoming a WTO member, technical assistance activities, and other resources.
Global Trade Ministers Retreat
WTO Ministerial Conferences are held every two years. They aren’t really strategy retreats, like the management team off-sites that companies hold, but maybe they should be.
The Future of the WTO
It would be a costly error to take the WTO for granted. It is one of the indispensable international institutions that underwrite the functioning of the world economy. Yet, the institution and its rules need to keep pace with the evolution of world trade. Without change, the WTO is at risk of not remaining fully relevant.