Baltic Rim Economies 4/2022

Special issue on Trade Policy

Published on the 31st of October 2022

U.S. trade policies post-Trump

“The world had its highest rate of economic growth from the end of the Second World War until the middle of the last decade. Almost all economies shared in growth well above the historical average and the number of people in poverty fell drastically.”

Anne O. Krueger
Former First Deputy Managing Director
International Monetary Fund

Senior Research Professor
School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
USA

Senior Fellow
Stanford Center for International Development (SCID)
USA

The WTO delivers a bountiful result – but what’s next?

“Early in the Geneva morning of 17th June, the WTO’s twelfth Ministerial meeting – MC12 – came to a close. The agreed package, hammered out over four days and two nights of intense negotiations, actually concluded four and a half years of negotiations since the last ministerial gathering held in Buenos Aires in 2017.”

Mikael Anzén
Sweden’s Ambassador to the WTO

Fragile international relations, trade, and policy

“The past few years have witnessed that nothing is as permanent as change. It seems that our global economies have faced new crises increasingly frequently. Just as we have been able to take a breath and have gained a flicker of the new normal, yet another disruption shakes our renewed balance. The global financial crisis in 2008, followed by the US–China trade war, global Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia’s invasion to Ukraine, have all shaken the global structures that govern the increasingly interconnected trade. As the growth of global trade has brought us welfare and increased living standards, it has also brought us increasingly interconnected and diverse international relations.”

Anna Karhu
Research Manager
Pan-European Institute (PEI), Turku School of Economics, University of Turku
Finland

Some new realities in international trade

“Trade and economic sanctions imposed on Russia are unprecedented not only in their scope, but also in their non-compliance with the basic rules of the WTO. These rules are based on the principle of non-discrimination, they also prohibit to introduce trade bans and other restrictions of trade. If the Russian government decides to challenge these sanctions in the WTO arbitration, Western trade lawyers will obviously have to work hard trying to justify these bans by the WTO security exceptions. These exceptions allow WTO members to violate basic rules in limited number of cases. It would be necessary for lawyers to demonstrate that all these bans and restrictions in trade with Russia were taken for the protection of’ “essential security interests” of the countries which introduced sanctions.”

Maxim Medvedkov
Higher School of Economics
Moscow, Russia

Baltic Rim Economies 4/2022 includes the following Expert articles

Anne O. Krueger: U.S. trade policies post-Trump

Mikael Anzén: The WTO delivers a bountiful result – but what’s next?

James Scott & Rorden Wilkinson: What future the WTO?

Eric W. Bond: The commitment/flexibility tradeoff in trade agreements

Pascal Kerneis: The necessary extension of the WTO Moratorium on E-Commerce

Kent Jones: Pandemic agreements: The trade connection

Dennis Unkovic: The fractured global supply chain

Heli Siikaluoma: International standards in superpower relations

Gilbert Gagné: The North American Free Trade Agreement 1.0 and 2.0

Ka Zeng: Making sense of the U.S.-China trade war

Lenita Toivakka: The geopolitical situation brings uncertainty

Ricardo Borges de Castro: The European Union’s phase of power

Anna Karhu: Fragile international relations, trade, and policy

Frank Heemskerk: Europe’s loss in competitiveness: Home-made solutions for a home-made problem

Dominic Boucsein: The importance of an active EU trade policy for a resilient and prosperous Europe

Mirela Mărcuț: Digital policy: Weapon of choice for EU global leadership

Katharina L. Meissner: EU sanctions: A powerful tool in a ruthless world?

Tony Heron & Gabriel Siles-Brügge: ‘Global Britain’ and ‘post-geography’

Vidmantas Janulevičius: We need to be ready to act in new conditions at any time

Cynthia J. Arnson: Economy and politics in Latin America

Luis Balduino: The Mercosur-European Union Trade Agreement

Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos: The meaning of the trade policy of the Jair Bolsonaro administration: A historical perspective

Marco Antônio Rocha, Victor Young, Arthur Welle & Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos: Open trade with ecological devastation? The failure of the trade policy of the Jair Bolsonaro administration

Dorotea López & Andrés Bórquez: Chile-China trade relations: Challenges and opportunities

Francisco Javier Ortiz de Artiñano: Mexican foreign direct investment, an opportunity for Europe

Aneta Tyc: Labour rights in the EU FTAs with Australia and New Zealand

Lynda Chinenye Iroulo: The African Union needs a single foreign policy

Jae Sundaram: TRIPS waiver and the failure of multilateralism

Sanjay Kathuria: Is South Asia only a figment of the imagination?: Far from it

Reena Marwah: India’s economic multilateralism in the Indo Pacific: Abundant caution

Arpita Mukherjee & Nida Rahman: Negotiating FTA with the EU: India’s perspective

Rajesh Chadha & Ganesh Sivamani: Critical minerals needed for India’s green transition

D Shyam Babu: As corporate globalisation proved catastrophic, we must focus on globalisation of values

Maxim Medvedkov: Some new realities in international trade

Ninel Seniuk: Russian-Chinese trade: Current trends and prospects

Andreas Raspotnik & Adam Stępień: The future of EU-Russia collaboration in the Arctic

Ruslan Mustakimovich Shafiev: Russia and the integration process in the Eurasian space

Hanna Mäkinen: The efficacy of sanctions: Case Russia