Trade

 Global GDP growth has proven resilient in 2025, despite the shocks caused by the trade policies implemented by United States President Donald Trump in the first year after his return to office. The gloomy projections offered by multilateral and private institutions in the first quarter of 2025 have given way to revised levels mostly in the 2.5% to 3% range for the year. ...

La modélisation classique de la croissance repose sur des outils – notamment la fonction de production agrégée et la comptabilité de la croissance – dont les incohérences logiques et les ambiguïtés épistémologiques sont connues depuis la Controverse de Cambridge et les travaux d’Anwar Shaikh. Pourtant, ces failles continuent d’alimenter des raisonnements fallacieux dans le débat économique et les discours institutionnels. Cet article montre que la nature tautologique de ces outils n ...

The meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, was more than an exercise in diplomacy. It was an emblematic performance of a world in transformation. Behind the formalities, the cameras, and the studied smiles lay an unspoken recognition: the world is no longer unipolar. The era of American supremacy, sustained for decades through its economic reach, military presence, and ideological projection, is giving way to a more diffuse, multipolar reality. ...

Morocco has emerged as one of Africa's success stories, achieving significant progress in economic transformation and the green transition over the past 25 years. Continuing and deepening this transformation is essential to reach the country’s goal of becoming a high-income economy in the coming decades. Significant challenges include managing the risk of the middle-income trap, addressing demographic pressures, promoting inclusive growth, ensuring environmental sustainability, and ...

This blog was originaly published on orfonline.org. The maritime cities of the 21st century are not merely legacies of the industrial age. Rather, they are becoming platforms of global connectivity and engines of economic transformation. As global trade shifts toward digital platforms and multimodal logistics, the traditional harbour is transforming into a 'Blue City' - a modern coastal centre where trade finance, service industries, and skilled workers are considered as k ...

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States has undergone massive deindustrialization in recent decades, with the country's manufacturing sector supposedly withering as it lost ground to China. This narrative has fueled debates about industrial policy, economic nationalism, and the reshoring of manufacturing production. But what if this story is only partially true? What if, instead of disappearing, American industry simply changed its address?  ...

Global economic growth has been more resilient than expected, as the artificial intelligence-led growth seems to be compensating for the negative impacts of trade conflicts. Overstretched asset values and slowing jobs growth may be signaling that the balanced crossing of those two paths will be challenged. ...

Estimates based on last year’s U.S. imports, by Maia G. Crook (from JPMorgan) indicate that the average effective U.S. tariff rate is currently 16%, and is expected to rise to 20% by the end of 2025. This represents an increase from 13% mid-year and 2.3% in 2024 (Figure 1). Effective tariff rates are a measure of the degree of protection a tariff structure offers to the value added provided by each sector to a country’s final product, taking into account both the tax on final g ...

History offers ample instances in which the veneer of fairness in international relations has worn away, revealing with unsentimental clarity the crude mechanics of power. The contemporary global trade architecture, promoted for decades by the United States as a virtuous system of open markets, a rules-based order, and reciprocal gains, is merely the latest in a long lineage of such illusions. ...

The multilateral, rule-based trading system underpinned by the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been undermined by the unilateral imposition of U.S. tariffs. Crucially, the foundational principle of non-discrimination among WTO members has been abandoned. While many countries have attempted to negotiate with the U.S. to resolve tariff disputes, they have simultaneously sought to deepen trade ties with each other through plurilateral and regi ...

This Paper was originally published on springer.comBrazil went from a quite impressive economic performance during much of the twentieth century to a period of mediocre growth from 1980 onwards. This shift has positioned the country as a textbook case of the “middle-income trap”. This paper aims to demonstrate how certain transformations in the international economy since the 1980s—notably the globalization of firms and industries—combined with a set of domestic challenges, disrupte ...

An Executive Order issued on July 30 by President Donald Trump hiked United States tariffs on imports from Brazil by 40%, in addition to the 10% established on April 2—the so-called ‘Liberation Day’ when Trump set out ‘reciprocal tariffs’ on countries around the world.The decree came with a long list of exemptions for Brazilian exports. For a number of product lines, the 10% April 2 tariff will continue to apply. These include air transport equipment, orange juice, furniture, fuel, ...

This paper was originally published on The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) In the face of Africa’s development challenges and the mismatch between long-term needs and short-term pressures, ring-fencing development expenditures offers a viable solution to secure sustainable financing for growth. ...

This Paper was originally published on ilo.org A guide by the Mainstreaming Employment into Trade and Investment in the Southern Mediterranean (METI) Programme to advise policymakers on how to develop and implement trade, investment and employment.The PRG is a strategic framework designed to align trade and investment policies with employment goals in the Southern Mediterranean. The guide promotes practical solutions and supports policies that foster economic growth, empow ...

Available soon on livremoi. The 2025 edition of the African Economic Report continues in the spirit of previous versions. It presents a broad overview of the continent’s economic evolution and offers insights into Africa’s relationship with the rest of the world. In other words, it explores how Africa navigates the effects of global fragmentation within its regional spaces while pursuing its ambition of continental integration. ...

Developing countries have few options to deal with the ongoing tariff war amid unpredictable shifts in global supply chains. However, regional economic integration offers a strategic path of development in these uncertain and challenging times. Helped by geographical proximity and cultural familiarity, countries in a region can benefit greatly from promoting trade with one another, reaping the benefits of comparative advantages and economies of scale—if they are able to establish a ...

President Donald Trump's "Reciprocal Tariff" policy, announced on April 2, 2025 (dubbed "Liberation Day"), represents one of the most significant shifts in U.S. trade policy in nearly a century. Trump’s policy imposes a baseline 10% tariff on all imports and additional country-specific tariffs that range from 10% to 50% for countries designated as having "non-reciprocal trading practices" with the U.S. These specific tariffs are determined based on each country’s bilateral trade bal ...

Last week marked my twenty-third consecutive week attending the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings in Washington, DC. While I no longer participate in the official sessions, I continue to be invited to the many side conventions and debates that surround them.A key moment is always the release of the IMF's World Economic Outlook report. This year, it drew particular attention due to curiosity about how the institution would project the impacts of the tariff war initiated by Trump’s s ...

The United States is at a critical juncture, facing a pivotal dilemma: preserving global leadership in a world it no longer fully controls. While it proclaims its primacy in the liberal international order, its actions tell a different story—one marked by tariffs, reshoring policies, and an open attempt to contain China’s rise. This strategy is driven less by long-term vision than domestic political calculus, underscoring the urgent need for strategic recalibration. ...

  Marcus Vinicius De Freitas Professor, China Foreign Affairs University Senior Fellow, Policy Center for the New South The Chinese government’s white paper, ‘China’s Position on Some Issues Concerning China-US Economic and Trade Relations,[1]’ issued on April 9, 2025, in response to the escalating tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, is not just a diplomatic response to the escalating tensions with the United States. It is a meticulously crafted strategic document th ...

When President Donald Trump gave his State of the Union address to a joint session of the United States Congress on March 4, 2025, many of his announced tariffs went into effect. These included a 25% levy on most goods imports from Canada (10% on oil and gas) and Mexico (though Trump subsequently exempted Canadian and Mexican imports that satisfy USMCA rules of origin requirements); and 20% (doubling the 10% implemented in February) on all imports from China. A 25% tariff has been i ...

This Chapter was originally published on springer.comSo, this session really is about what's happened to global trade in the last couple of decades, of course, really since the global financial crisis, trade dependency has levelled off, peaking at around 60% in 2008, 2009.  ...

The road to decarbonizing the planet runs through the energy transition, which includes the shift from fossil-fueled cars to renewable energy vehicles. This automotive transition is unfolding as a true revolution in the industry. The evolution toward electric and hybrid vehicles has come in tandem with the ascent of Chinese producers. In the current context of geopolitical and technological rivalries, the automotive transition has been marked by an intense trade war, with implicati ...

This paper examines the implications of the U.S.-China trade war for developing countries, particularly in light of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The study traces the origins and escalation of the trade conflict, analyzing its multiple impacts on global trade patterns and economic growth. While some developing countries have benefited from trade diversion and supply-chain shifts, others, especially resource-exporting nations and the least-developed countries, have faced signi ...

  This paper was originally published on t20brasil.org The resurgence of Neo protectionism as a reality is creating a pressing need to establish New Industrial Policies (NIPs) capable of striking a balance between Global Value Chains (GVC) managers' quest for efficiency and policy makers' need for more increasing resilience or national security in a turmoiled geopolitical landscape. Furthermore, although NIPs might pursue legitimate non-economic objectives, they are often cap ...

The 2024 Annual Report on the African Economy is dedicated to monetary and financial issues on the Continent. There are three reasons for this choice. African economies are exposed to macro-financial instabilities partly generated by global monetary and financial turbulence. The Continent’s currencies and financial systems are engaged in very different dynamics, where routine methods and daring, if not risky, practices coexist. The question of the architecture of the internationa ...

Carbon trading have long been touted as a silver bullet to channelise climate finance to African countries lacking the capital to support climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. The erstwhile ‘Kyoto Protocol’ and its successor ‘The Paris Agreement’, though much more comprehensive and wider in scope, both recognize the importance of carbon trading (a form of carbon pricing) in combatting climate change, and in the Paris Agreement the same is enshrined under Article 6 and its sub-c ...