Global GDP has slowed sharply, from near 4% in late 2017 to half that rate on an annualized basis in recent quarters. The downturn in fortunes over the last two years has come as a big surprise. The rapid expansion of 2016/2017 was broad based but died young. Prior to it we had suffered seven long years of slow growth in the wake of the global financial crisis
Thirty months into President Trump's radical trade policy, it is time to take stock. American firms tend to give the President the benefit of the doubt - that the aim is not protection (which most don't want) but opening up markets overseas, striking better trade deals, and reducing the nation's big trade deficit. So far, however, none of this has happened. Instead, there is virulent uncertainty, barriers against American firms are going up, Europe, Japan and China have struck important deals with their trading partners, and the WTO, on which American firms depend for MFN treatment is at risk of collapse.
The trade war between China and the United States roils stock markets, and the World Trade Organization is at risk of extinction because major players ignore its rules. But the fierce controversy surrounding the Global Compact on Migration, a mild and non-binding document which several of the countries gathered in Marrakesh – including about one-third of EU members - refused to sign, shows that migration is even more radioactive than trade. As they face a backlash against globalization, policy-makers are under far greater pressure to contain migration than to stop imports.
The Entrepreneurship of Migrants was one of the topics under discussion in the UN Global Forum, which just concluded in Marrakesh with the adoption of a Global Compact on Migration.
*The recommendations put forth below have been published, both print and online, in the Financial Times.
The leaders of the G20 will meet on 30 November and 1 December in Buenos Aires for their annual summit. They need to acknowledge that the last two years have been characterized by strong headwinds for the world economy. This time, however, it is not a mixture of poor macroeconomic policies and bad business decisions – as in 2008 when they met in Washington for their first summit – that endangers the well-being of billions of citizens around the globe. This time the threat stems from deliberate political decisions, in particular on trade.
This blog is based on remarks delivered at the Think-Tank Summit in Buenos Aires on 18 September 2018 held under the G-20’s Argentine Presidency.
Africa has an enormous infrastructure gap that impedes its development. The Compact with Africa (CwA) is an international policy initiative sponsored under the German presidency of the G-20 in 2017 designed to bridge that gap. Intended to draw in the private sector in developing Africa’s infrastructure through a combination of Private-Public Partnerships (PPP) and blended finance, the CwA involves the public sector of a dozen African countries have volunteered to join the initiative, and international organizations such as the African Development Bank and various donor agencies. Though the initiative has built up momentum among policy-makers since its launch, the participation of the private sector has been noticeably weak.
Historians often offer different interpretations of the events that have shaped our destiny, yet, with respect to World War 2, the bloodiest conflict in history, they seem to concur on two points. First, that those yearning for peace underestimated the National Socialists’ determination to wage a war of conquest until it was far too late to deter them, and, second, that Nazi Germany failed to anticipate that Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union – each of which it provoked - would eventually combine and exercise overwhelming power to destroy it. These combined errors help account both for the breakout of the war and its subsequent murderous intensity. Fortunately, trade wars do not kill people, but the consequences for the living standards of the world’s citizens could turn out to be disastrous. Moreover, as the great tariff conflicts between the United States, Europe and China escalate, similar errors are being repeated today as happened in the run-up to World War 2.
President Trump’s proclamation that, because of national security concerns, he will apply a 25% tariff on all steel and a 10% tariff on all aluminium imports into the United States – except provisionally and dependent on NAFTA negotiations those from Canada and Mexico – affects, respectively 5.1 billion Euros and 1.1 billion Euros of EU exports. These are not trivial sums. However, the invocation of the national security exception in this case has implications that go far beyond narrow sectoral effects: it represents a challenge to the world trading system as we know it, and is, in fact, the challenge the President of the United States had promised many times during the election campaign and as a private citizen in decades prior.
