Tag Archives: world trade organisation

Can a global trade deal be rescued?

By Nick T | Thu 9th May 2013 - 8:13 am

Congratulations to Roberto Azevedo, who, it has just been announced, will take over from Pascal Lamy as the head of the World Trade Organisation later this year. Azevedo, a Brazilian diplomat, beat off Herminio Blanco, a former Mexican finance minister who had the backing of many developed countries.

The most obvious and pressing task facing Azevedo is to rescue the so-called Doha Round of world trade talks, which stalled in 2008 and have made little progress since.

In the absence of global progress, a number of bilateral trade talks have sprung up, most recently …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured and free trade | 3 Comments

For once, some good news about the European economies

By Mark Pack | Sun 18th December 2011 - 9:55 am

Good news about the economic situation across Europe has been in short supply recently, but there has been one piece of good news this week. One which, moreover, shows politicians learning the lessons from the 1930s (although quite what some of the right lessons are is a somewhat controversial topic).

In the 1930s, depression caused countries to sink into rounds of beggar my neighbour protectionism, putting up barriers to trade in vain attempts to protect domestic economies but which only ended up dragging everyone further down.

This time round, not only is protectionism not on the march in the same way, …