China is the world’s largest exporter and as the country’s exports have grown, so has the number of disagreements with its trading partners. An article in The Economist on the rising number of disputes that China has brought to the World Trade Organization says that it is a good thing that Beijing and other emerging markets are turning to the WTO to settle disputes instead of retaliating on their own. But can the WTO’s dispute settlement system cool mounting tensions with China?
Chad Bown, author of Self-Enforcing Trade, argues “that America or the EU may still find disputes with China tricky. Countries often threaten to target their retaliation against politically-sensitive products, hoping that their manufacturers will convince their own governments to change course. But this sort of strategy may be more difficult in a dispute with undemocratic China.”
In his New York Times column, David Brooks discussed the underlying causes of the tremendous destruction from the earthquake in Haiti. He referred to WhatWorks in Development? edited by Jessica Cohen and William Easterly to back up his point that “we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty.” Countries have spent trillions of dollars in foreign aid worldwide, yet this assistance has not generated growth. According to the book:
The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.
In mid-December, the EU reached accord with Latin American countries on the banana tax. This was the longest-running WTO dispute and is the subject of Chapter 3 in Chad Bown's Self-Enforcing Trade. In “An Introduction to WTO Dispute Settlement,” Bown uses the EC–Bananas III dispute to introduce the WTO’s formal trade dispute resolution process:
The fundamental economic interest that boiled over into a formal trade dispute in the early 1990s involved foreign access to the European import market for bananas—the world’s largest banana market with imports of roughly $2.5 billion per year. While the trade dispute on which I focus erupted in the early 1990s, the issue of EC banana imports has been politically contentious on the domestic front (that is, between EC member states) dating back to the 1950s and the Treaty of Rome. Until the early 1990s, member states had different and divergent external trade policies toward bananas. . . . The different trade policies of EC member states toward the same product managed to coexist until 1993 when, after politically rancorous internal negotiations, the members finally converged on a single, European Community–wide import regime for bananas. The new import policy, known as Regulation 404, was essentially a tariff rate quota. The quota divvied up the EC import market and established one quantitative import limit allocated to ACP producers and another to non-ACP producers (mainly Latin American exporters). Bananas coming in under the quota available to Latin American exporters would be subject to an import tariff that was not applied to imports from the ACP countries.
According to Bloomberg News, Latin American countries are the clear winners of the dispute. As a result of the settlement, banana prices in the EU will drop and exports from Latin America will rise.
Recessions often bring high tariffs and trade wars, and recent figures from the World Bank show that industry requests for trade barriers are up 30% over the past year. But according to Chad Bown, there is cause for optimism as well. In an op-ed in the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal, Bown writes that the "global economy may still stay on a pro-trade path." He points to a recent U.S. government decision to deny new trade barriers on imports of aluminum pistons from Argentina and China's use of the World Trade Organization to formally question barriers instead of resorting to retaliatory measures. Bown discusses the WTO's dispute settlement system in his new book Self-Enforcing Trade: Developing Countries and WTO Dispute Settlement.
Akbar Ahmed, one of the word's leading authorities on Islam, will perform an original play based on his life on Sunday, November 1, at 7:30 p.m. in Washington, D.C. “Waziristan to Washington: A Muslim at the Crossroads” takes us back to his birthplace and traces the evolution of modern Pakistan, the rise of Islamic extremism, efforts to achieve integration in the modern world, and attempts to build bridges through dialogue.
Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, a leading expert on Islam and author of Journey into Islam, recently completed a tour to uncover the status of Muslims in America. With a team of researchers, he visited more than 70 U.S. cities to interview thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims from all walks of life. He presents the findings of the project in a documentary film and a forthcoming book, Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam.
The principles of global governance, and what it means for the rest of us
In an interview with The Africa Group [pdf], Robert Rotberg underscores the importance of engaging developing regions such as Botswana, Ethiopia and Nigeria in the rising value of principles in the world order. Rotberg discusses the transformation of Africa and China, stating, “China will continue to have a profound influence in the development of Africa. Africa, however, needs to develop a multilateral, collective response to China’s involvement.” He adds that though Africa is not immune to the current global meltdown, there are still good opportunities in some sectors for African development. What this means is economic growth for Africa and for better relations between Africa and the rest of the world. But as China submerges itself into the African government, there is a chance that this evolving symbiosis will make Africa the poorest and most troubled continent, while it further powers China’s expansive economic machine.
In the book China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence, Rotberg and a team of renowned scholars tackle China’s interest in African oil, military and security relations, the influx and goals of Chinese aid to sub-Saharan Africa, human rights issues, and China’s overall strategy toward Africa. They outline Africa’s chance for poverty alleviation in the developing regions through a system that promises to do more than anything attempted by Western colonialism or international aid programs.
Rotberg further addresses the issue in his latest book, Corruption, Global Security, and World Order. In collaboration with a distinguished group of contributors, he discusses the global ramifications and implications of deeply embedded corruption in various nations.
In 2010 Brookings will publish a follow-up to Akbar Ahmed's Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization entitled Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam. Ahmed's new book follows the Muslim professor as he sets out to discover America with a team of young Americans. They visited over 75 cities and more than 100 mosques in an unprecendented project interviewing countless Americans in their homes, schools, and places of worship. "Journey into America" the movie premieres Saturday, July 4 at 9 p.m at the Washington DC Convention Center as a part of the Islamic Film Festival at the Islamic Society of North America's (ISNA) annual convention.
In the time it takes to watch this video, Federal government agencies will have...
• Solved multiple crimes
• Supervised the safe take-offs and landings of hundreds of airplanes
• Paid food stamps to hungry citizens
• Issued a national weather forecast
• Monitored the skies for any sign of enemy attack
• Rescued struggling ships at sea
• And processed some $50 million in banking transactions.
But after a century of neglect, the cracks are beginning to show. Due to rapid globalization, business has changed and adapted in order to survive. By contrast, the government systems and structures that served an earlier age are still in place. In The People Factor: Strengthening America by Investing in Public Service, Linda J. Bilmes and W. Scott Gould provide a compelling business case for investing in the civil service so that it may better serve the nation. By investing $10 billion to improve recruiting, training and management of the federal workforce, the authors predict that investment will yield $300-$600 billion in productivity gains.
Ahmed and Martin featured on NPR, WaPo, HuffPo and C-SPAN
Akbar Ahmed, author of Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization offered his own insights on President Obama’s speech at Cairo University this morning in a Washington Post guest column. Referring to his 2006 travels into Muslim nations for the research behind Journey into Islam, Ahmed called on the president and the world to continue repeating the statements and actions of cross-cultural understanding.
Yesterday, on Wednesday, June 3, Ahmed was also featured in an interview on the Diane Rehm Show. Ahmed, whom the BBC has referred to as “the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam,” is currently taking a one-year sabbatical to research Muslims in America. His cross-country study of the attitudes and perceptions Americans have regarding Muslims will be published in a forthcoming complement to Journey into Islam, tentatively titled Journey into America. C-SPAN also had video of Ahmed discussing President Obama's speech in Cairo today.
In related news, Frankie Martin, one of Ahmed’s researchers for Journey into Islam, was published in the Huffington Post on Tuesday, June 2 with the article “Obama and the Dialogue of Civilizations.” In the article Martin ties his work for Journey into Islam into speculations on Obama’s Thursday morning speech at Cairo University:
“Given these challenges, what can the President say that will make his Cairo speech a success? I believe an extensive trip I took through the Muslim world in 2006 with Professor Akbar Ahmed, the Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, can yield some answers.”
Martin is currently the Ibn Khaldun Chair Research Fellow at American University's School of International Service.
David Brooks cites WHAT WORKS IN DEVELOPMENT?
In his New York Times column, David Brooks discussed the underlying causes of the tremendous destruction from the earthquake in Haiti. He referred to What Works in Development? edited by Jessica Cohen and William Easterly to back up his point that “we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty.” Countries have spent trillions of dollars in foreign aid worldwide, yet this assistance has not generated growth. According to the book:
- Read the full New York Times column by David Brooks
- Learn more about What Works in Development?
Posted by Brookings Press on January 20, 2010 in Commentary, Development, Economics, Foreign Policy, Globalization, Poverty | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)