Asia
The EAEU is shopping for partners in Asia. Middle finger to the West or sound trade policy?
The US - China trade dispute has disrupted trade and investment flows, stifling global and regional trade growth.
Today the EU looks to be perfectly happy to expand trade with authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records when the economic gains are sufficiently large.
China has been receiving flak for its conditional investments and loans that are resulting in land and resource grabbing in Asia and Africa.
“We call on our governments to either address the real reasons why ISDS is fundamentally flawed or to abandon its ‘reform’ agenda that is designed to reinforce and re-legitimise a self-serving investment dispute system.”
Cross-regional mega-FTAs are now being preferred over bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements as imperialist powers compete for cheap labor, sources of raw materials, and markets.
Cambodian officials pleaded last week with representatives of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) to include more Cambodian products into the bloc’s joint tariff scheme during a high level diplomatic meeting in Moscow.
The revived TPP 11 operates as a significant alternative to China’s approach, embodied in the Belt and Road Initiative.
India has joined hands with Japan and United States to build infrastructure for promoting connectivity in Indo-Pacific region, ostensibly to counter the Belt and Road initiative of China.
Indonesia set to be crucial battleground for negotiations
Certain long-standing provisions of trade agreements, specifically ISDS, are worthy of reconsideration.
Donald Trump is flexing the United States’ economic muscle in East Asia by introducing a web of new-generation bilateral trade deals to contain China’s challenge. But Beijing is fighting back by political means.
Mainland affairs minister intrigued by Trump references to ’Indo-Pacific’.
New Zealand appears to have joined a mysterious "regional initiative" at the request of the United States, but the matter is being kept under wraps.
Trump declared his 11-day swing through Asia a success before heading home, saying that “all countries dealing with us on trade know that the rules have changed.”
China is steadily laying the groundwork for its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative program.
National Pork Producers have let the administration know that the U.S. should focus on the Asian-Pacific area, starting with Japan.
The Energy Charter Secretariat is in expansion mode, wanting to gain access to energy resources in Africa and Asia for its current—mostly developed country—members, and extending a far-reaching (and outdated) investment protection system to investments in resource-rich countries.
The new trade discussions target multiple countries in Asia, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters at the 2017 SelectUSA investment summit
