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Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Below some highlights of this week’s trade committee meeting in Brussels, and a little update on the EU-Australia FTA talks. In case you missed them, check out our other articles this week on no-deal Brexit here and here, the EU’s food export bonanza, trilateral EU-Japan-US discussions on China and WTO, CETA, and the …
Donald Trump signed his first major trade deal on Monday, an update to the US pact with Korea that the president called a “very big deal” that is “very, very good for American farmers”. More sober assessments are that the revisions to the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement are modest and …
Canada and the EU hosted their first CETA Joint Committee meeting. The committee’s role is to oversee the implementation of the trade agreement. In fact, the meeting mainly dealt with demands made on it which are not in the treaty. CETA has been in force ‘provisionally’ for one year. But …
A trilateral meeting among the trade chiefs of the United States, Japan and the EU held in New York committed the three World Trade Organization members to launch common initiatives to overhaul the Geneva-based institution. This trilateral format of meetings started with the aim to address common concerns on – …
EU trade this week was heavy on WTO reform and China (here, here). Brexit was all over the headlines. But there are no actual new developments to report from the heads of government meeting in Austria with Prime Minister Theresa May this week. The Irish border issue remains unresolved, so …
Any mention of the World Trade Organization these days usually includes the words “reform” or “Appellate Body”. While efforts to limit harmful fisheries subsidies aren’t making many big headlines right now, the good news is that they actually seem to be making some progress. That’s not to say a deal …
There’s been a little bit of noise this week on EU trade files in relation to Asia. So here a short update.
The EU and China know they must work together to show leadership in matters of global trade and investment. But realising effective cooperation with trade partners to make the system more robust and to withstand the “disruptive bilateralism originating from Washington” is easier said than done, argues Jacques Pelkmans.
After this summer’s successful EU-China summit, Brussels and Beijing are trying to find common ground on trade and investment as well as World Trade Organization reform. Yet despite an exchange of market access offers as part of ongoing investment talks, the two sides are finding it hard to bridge gaps. Worse, …
It’s been a big-ticket week in trade, kicked off by a meeting between the USTR and the EU’s trade commissioner on a possible ‘deal’, and two big reports adopted by the European Parliament on relations with the United States and with China. There was also some action on the Brexit …
