Suchergebnisse

Examines the 1992 decision to form AFTA, which was motivated by economic, political, domestic, and external factors, such as the end of the Cold War and Indo-China conflict; some focus on the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT).

This paper takes as the central objective of international economic diplomacy in the Pacific region, the preservation and enhancement of the conditions for continued economic growth in the style of recent decades. The international system that has supported vigorous trade expansion is under threat from several directions: tension between the United States and Japan (and to a lesser extent between the United States and Taiwan and Korea) over large trade and payments imbalances; the prospect of increased economic introversion in Europe as 1992 approaches; the accommodation of new patterns of comparative advantage in the Asian newly industrialised economies (NIEs) as they compress into a few years adjustments to a decade of rapid economic growth; and the new challenge of managing the emergence of China, with its partially reformed centrally planned system, as a major player in Pacific economic relations. It is important for peace and political stability, too, that the environment of relatively open economic relations that made a realistic alternative to autarky available to China at a crucial point in its political history, is preserved to provide similarly reliable alternatives for the states of Indochina, the Soviet Union and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), at a time of opportunity for progress on reducing longstanding sources of conflict.

AbstractMonopolies continue to dominate world trade by controlling global production and distribution chains. Neither free trade nor fair trade has transformed this system; the recent rise in nativism and pseudo‐protectionism has not, and cannot, address these problems either. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the largest free trade area in the world, promises to be different. AfCFTA rejects classical, neoclassical, and Marxist theories of trade, appealing, instead, to non‐aligned pan‐Africanism. It advocates continental free trade as a way to overcome the lingering effects of slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism. However, its exclusive focus on continental Africa, its disinterest in systemic redistribution, and encouragement of the private appropriation of socially created land rents prevents AfCFTA from achieving its goals. In fact, AfCFTA might actually foster inequality—progress alongside of poverty—and in so doing, undermine the very essence of this trade regime. What Henry George (1886) called "true free trade," a theory based on making land common by socializing land rent, offers a more promising and powerful model through which to achieve the pan‐African agenda. Indeed, only true free trade can definitively decolonize global trade.