Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: Evan A Feigenbaum, CFR
For more than a decade, creating multilateral forums has rivalled badminton as the leading indoor sport of Asian academics, think tanks and governments.
And the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as proposals multiply and Asians organise themselves into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups. Read more…
Author: Joel Rathus, ANU
In early May, the ASEAN +3 Finance Ministers met in Hanoi and reached an agreement on two important issues in the development of the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI).
Firstly, they appointed Wei Benhua to be the first director of the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO). Read more…
Author: Sheryn Lee, ANU
On 4-5 June, Singapore was once again awash with security and defence buzz amid the 10th annual International Institute of Strategic Studies’ Shangri-La Dialogue.
While in previous years attention has centred on the keynote address of the US Secretary of Defence, this year’s event was dominated by a first time attendant: the Chinese Defence Minister, General Liang Guanglie. The Chinese General’s appearance heralded the strategic importance of the dialogue as a forum for the world’s leading nations. Read more…
Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, CSIS, Jakarta
In mid-November 2011, Indonesia will host the Sixth East Asia Summit (EAS).
Based on the Kuala Lumpur Declaration 2005, this year’s Summit will continue to be a forum for dialogue on broad strategic, political and economic issues to promote ‘common security, common prosperity, and common stability.’ Read more…
Author: Amitav Acharya, Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada and American University
It is bad enough that Canada is absent in Asia. But what’s worse is that nobody in Asia seems to care.
In a recent op-ed, Joseph Caron (Canada’s former ambassador to China and Japan and former High Commissioner to India) and David Emerson (former Canadian Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister) wrote: ‘Canada remains on the fringes of [Asia’s] remarkable transformation, whether diplomatic engagement, trade, foreign investment or educational or cultural exchanges. We risk being left behind.’
Author: William Overholt, Harvard University
It is doubtful that Washington politicians understand just how important the IMF leadership decision is. This decision is crucial because of a history that Americans have largely forgotten.
During the Asian Crisis of 1997-8, the IMF made two decisions that continue to threaten the world’s ability to have a coherent financial crisis management policy based on a single institution.
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, EAF
Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRICs) were identified as the global economic powers of the future in a famous Goldman Sachs report in 2003.
Now South Africa has joined the club (the BRICS) and Indonesia is standing in the wings. Read more…
Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International
In its catchy 2003 report which conjectured that the combined GDP of the BRIC economies would exceed that of the United States, Japan, Britain, France and Germany, collectively, by mid-century, Goldman Sachs projected the sizes of the Chinese, Indian, Russian and Brazilian economies to be US$ trillion 4.8, 1.4, 1.2 and 0.9 respectively, in 2015.
In fact, each of the BRICs surpassed its projection in 2010. Clearly, the future is arriving sooner than was thought! Read more…
Authors: Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett, Vox EU
The world trade system is at an historical fork: WTO members must make a choice.
Key decisions will be taken in discussions that start with the 29th April 2011 meeting of the Doha Round’s steering committee and that will continue for the coming weeks (assuming that this Friday’s meeting avoids an acrimonious breakdown). Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU
So what’s the problem? Does it matter if the WTO’s Doha Round is prematurely pronounced dead?
For Asia and the Pacific, it matters, seriously. Read more…
Author: Ed Gresser, GlobalWorks Foundation
It looks like Doha is heading for its first ever round failure, unless there is a big rescue operation directed by presidents and prime ministers — above all, those of the United States and China — or a partial salvaging as former U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab recommends.
This would be the first abandoned Round since multilateral trade negotiations were invented in 1947. This raises three basic questions: why this stalemate? What does it mean for trade and the global economy? And can/should anything new be done? Read more…
Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International
United States Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk’s open admission recently that a Doha Round deal is unlikely to be reached this year, coming as it does on the heels of reports that the United States attempted to organize agreement in Geneva to suspend the Round, bodes poorly for the future health of the multilateral trade negotiation system.
Yet in good measure, the United States has been the villain of the piece here, its penchant to indulgently re-frame, mid-stream, the terms of Doha’s already-unwieldy core bargain to suit domestic constituencies going to the heart of the problem. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan
In recent talks with Australian Prime Minister Gillard, Prime Minister Kan reaffirmed his government’s commitment to concluding a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) with Australia and to resuming talks at the earliest possible opportunity.
The Joint Statement by the Prime Ministers of Japan and Australia formally pledged that the ‘two countries would conduct further negotiations leading to a conclusion of a comprehensive and mutually beneficial bilateral FTA/EPA’. Read more…
Author: Shiro Armstrong, ANU and Columbia University
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) aims to be a high quality, 21st Century economic agreement among its nine members. It is also supposed to encourage others to join in. Led by the United States, there is a strong push to deliver TPP this year in time for the APEC meeting in Honolulu in November.
But rushing a quick deal on the TPP should not be at the expense of a good economic agreement. Read more…
Author: Deborah Elms, NTU
In the run up to the sixth round negotiations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, I argued that this was the moment when the proverbial ‘rubber would meet the road’. Officials had to start outlining specific bargains in trade rather than talking in generalities. What happened at the Singapore meetings?
For most of the first year of negotiations between the members, officials were free to discuss the high quality, 21st century nature of this new agreement. Read more…