geopolitics
From a geopolitical perspective, Europe arguably needs the EPA trade deals with Africa more than Africa does.
Chinese investments in the United States now exceed American investments in China in an historic shift that may see the emergence of joint Sino-US multinationals, but one that is also fraught with geopolitical risks, said analysts.
Mining is expected to become a much larger portion of their overall trade, with an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clause instituted to protect companies and allow them to seek compensation if government policy negatively impacts their investments.
Russia is ready to suspend the free trade zone agreement with Ukraine after the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement comes into effect, Tatyana Golendeyeva, deputy chief of the Russian Federal Customs Service said.
Ukraine signed on Friday an historic free-trade agreement with the European Union that has been at the heart of months of violence and upheaval in the country, drawing an immediate threat of "grave consequences" from Russia.
The deal signed last week by Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to create a Eurasian Economic Union is yet another countermeasure against US and European attempts to isolate Russia.
Diplomacy in South Asia is given over to give-no-quarter bureaucrats, who cleave to a nationalism that continues to trump economics.
La visite de Barack Obama au Japon, qui s’achevait vendredi, n’a pas permis d’aboutir à la conclusion d’un accord commercial entre Washington et Tokyo mais a été marquée par la réaffirmation du soutien américain face aux ambitions chinoises.
What will happen next in Ukraine? The coordinated plundering of the country by both sides (the West and Russia), says Kolesnik Dmitry.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key says a free-trade agreement with Russia could be delayed because of the escalating situation between the superpower and Ukraine.
Peter van Ham, senior research fellow at the Dutch Clingendael Institute, thinks that TTIP could have an overwhelming standard-setting power for other countries.
The US state department has been remodelled to fit the EU’s so-called Eastern Partnership policy on pulling former Soviet republics closer to the West amid Russia’s new assertiveness in the region
The European Union has suspended work on a trade and association agreement with Ukraine after failing to get a "clear commitment" from President Viktor Yanukovych to sign it.
In mid-November, Wikileaks released the secret draft text for the Intellectual Property Rights Chapter of the TPP. Stuart Trew talks about what this leak tells us about the agreement as a whole.
After 26 years of frustration over its start-and-stop bid to join the European Union, would Turkey ever consider joining a rival regional bloc led by the Kremlin? Few observers believe it likely, but it’s not completely out of the question.
In a bid to force Ukraine to abandon the signing of a free trade agreement with the EU, Russian veterinary service Rosselkhoznadzor has banned meat imports from two Ukrainian companies in the first step of a possible meat war that could seriously damage the Ukrainian industry.
The TPP has been mostly framed as a secret free-trade agreement but it has in large part taken the form of a policy initiative called the Pacific Pivot, a shifting of military resources into the Pacific.
The European Commission has warned Russia that it is "unacceptable" to use threats against ex-Soviet states which are seeking closer ties with the EU.
"If Ukraine believes it needs to sign a treaty on free trade with the EU, it means that’s how it should be. However, we see some problems for us and them here," Putin said in an interview with Russia’s Channel One and the Associated Press.
The EU, Israel’s biggest trading partner, is preparing EU-wide guidelines for the labelling of goods made at settlements as originating from Israeli-occupied Palestinian land. The measure would affect $300m of Israeli exports, according to a World Bank estimate.
