Suchergebnisse

This paper presents an overview of the trade and policy issues in the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It assesses the dramatic changes in the political, economic, and business background from the early 2000s (shaping the MDGs) to the early 2010s (designing the SDGs). These changes rarely get the attention they merit, despite their profound consequences on how to use - or not use - trade policies for promoting development. Following this, it examines the three major phases in the MDG/SDG progress: first, a pro-trade agenda during the preparation of the MDG Report (2002-2005) insisting on the positive impact of trade for development if - a big if - economically sound trade policies are adopted; then, uninspiring MDG8 Gap Reports cantoned in the increasingly sterile - and economically unsound - World Trade Organization negotiations during the implementation period of the MDGs (2007-2015); finally, the ignorance of the trade potential for a "better life" during the preparation of the SDGs (2013-2015). The paper also provides a telling comparison of the MDGs' and SDGs' very different inputs and outputs. The paper concludes by stressing the largely ignored common regulatory agenda between trade policies and the SDGs, arguing that a well-designed trade policy could play a key role for improving domestic regulations, and, hence, contribute to the SDGs' ultimate goal - a "better life".

This paper uses different sources of data to assess the relative level of openness of the public procurement markets of major trading nations, with a specific focus on the European Union (EU). The data reveal a picture that is very different from what is commonly argued to be the case by policymakers in the EU. The divergence between discourse and reality is in part a reflection of the absence of appropriate data on government sourcing patterns, suggesting greater effort is needed to both compile more accurate statistics and to take into account basic economic factors such as the size of economies.

Despite major advancements in the Japan-EU FTA (JEUFTA) negotiations, the talks remain difficult in the railway sector. These difficulties flow largely from the fact that the Japanese railways are organized on a radically different legal and economic basis than the railway systems in the EU. First, the three major Japanese passenger rail companies, are totally privatized, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and do not receive pub- lic subsidies. Japanese firms are even "more private" than an US railway company such as Amtrak, funded by federal money. In the Japanese deregulation, the markets remained unbundled with passenger rail companies owning both trains and tracks. As a result, the government involvement on these firms are less than in Europe, where passenger rail firms did not have the freedom to choose the providers of their equipments. Meanwhile in Japan, the competition between private companies with no access to public funds made it necessary for these companies to be demanding with respect to the railway equipment companies. This paper argues that, if these differences have made so far the negotiations more difficult, they also offer more opportunities in the future for the Japanese and EU railway companies in a global world. A huge mature market such as the Japanese requires by definition a massive amount of money in terms of maintenance, renewal and modernization of the infrastructure (signaling equipment) and of the rolling stock. Every year, about 40-50% of the JR capital expenditure is spent for safety and renewal in rolling stock and signaling equipment. (.)

One of the stated objectives of recent 'mega' preferential trade agreements (PTAs) being negotiated by large trading powers is to address the trade-impeding effects of differences in national regulation. Past experience demonstrates there are serious limitations in what can be achieved in PTAs even in instances where there is a high level of trust among the countries involved. The disappointing results of the European Union's "Internal Market" illustrate the challenge of using PTAs to integrate markets. This paper argues that some systemic errors were made in the way the EU Internal Market was negotiated. The two main instruments used to build the EU Internal Market—harmonization and mutual recognition—are of limited usefulness for integrating modern economies. An alternative instrument—mutual equivalence—is a much more promising instrument not only for the EU but also for the mega-PTAs currently under negotiation.