Category Archives: Trade

Manufacturing dissent

United States man­u­fac­tur­ers, like their Aus­tralian coun­ter­parts, are indulging some hyper­bolic alarm about their future, but for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. U.S. eco­nomic growth seems too anaemic to sup­port demand in the sec­tor; Australia’s eco­nomic growth seem to be bypass­ing it. Still, this self-interested plea in the NYT from a direc­tor of GE for pub­lic sub­si­dies (“inno­va­tion …

August 31, 2011 – 11:56 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy, Trade | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The canker in quarantine policies

No, it’s not the bit­ter reac­tion from the apple and pear lobby to the end of our century-long ban on apple imports from NZ. What else could we expect: thanks to the price (and qual­ity) pro­tec­tion afford by the ban, uncom­pet­i­tive pro­duc­ers in those indus­tries have been ripping-off the con­sumer so long we could hardly …

August 31, 2011 – 9:05 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy, Trade | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Eminent call-girls

Aaargh! Yet another knee-jerk call in the Finan­cial Times for “wise” men (and women) to guide WTO out of it’s slough. Third, in lieu of the WTO min­is­te­r­ial, a group of emi­nent peo­ple should be appointed with the task find­ing a way out of the cur­rent dol­drums and out­lin­ing future courses of action. The head …

August 29, 2011 – 10:11 am | By pwg | Posted in Trade | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Competition policy in PTAs

Here’s a surprise…or is it? Accord­ing to the WTO’s 2011 annual report, the most com­mon WTO-extension (WTO-X) pro­vi­sion of pref­er­en­tial trade agree­ments (PTAs) is in a domain that the WTO dropped from its nego­ti­at­ing agenda in 2003: com­pe­ti­tion pol­icy. Research for the WTO’s 2011 Annual Report shows that 90 of the 96 PTAs exam­ined have …

July 29, 2011 – 9:52 am | By pwg | Posted in Trade | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

WTO embraces the irresistible

WTO’s annual World Trade Report for 2011 sig­nals a turning-point for the soon-to-be-Doha-less Orga­ni­za­tion. It attempts to pro­vide a ratio­nale for aban­don­ing WTO’s half-hostile stand-off with the more dynamic uni­verse of pref­er­en­tial trade agree­ments (PTAs) and for embrac­ing PTAs instead. Or, as the sub­ti­tle of the report puts it, in EU-ese, a ratio­nale for mov­ing …

July 27, 2011 – 8:06 am | By pwg | Posted in Trade | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

A great big (banana) tax

Banana prices are a ridicu­lous $14–15 per kg. for only one rea­son; the out­ra­geous ban on imports that reg­u­larly deliv­ers mas­sive sub­si­dies directly from con­sumers’ pock­ets to this tiny group of grow­ers. Aus­tralian Banana Grow­ers Coun­cil chief exec­u­tive Jonathan Eccles told The Aus­tralian that grow­ers were get­ting up to $10/kg whole­sale. That, he said, was …

April 4, 2011 – 7:12 am | By pwg | Posted in Trade | Tagged | Comments (1)

ACTA Draft Treaty

It seems that the “near final” draft released a few days ago has been watered down a lot from ear­lier leaked drafts. Expec­ta­tions man­age­ment? Or actual dis­agree­ments between the par­ties? Since ACTA was an attempt to nego­ti­ate an treaty on enforce­ment of prin­ci­ples cov­ered by the mul­ti­lat­eral frame­work in secret and among a select group …

October 8, 2010 – 1:34 pm | By pwg | Posted in Trade | Tagged , , | Comments (0)