News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Washington’s insistence that the World Trade Organization must be modernised before it gets behind proposals to fill Appellate Body vacancies begs the question: Why hasn’t the US come up with its own proposals to reform the Geneva-based trade body? The Trump administration said in its February Trade Policy Agenda that …
Is small beautiful? And is not having the United States on board a trade negotiation even more so? That could well be, as shown by the state of very below-the-radar discussions on ‘services domestic regulation’ unfolding in the World Trade Organization. A group of about 30 WTO members have been …
The trade policy of the Trump administration is casting a big shadow over the annual World Trade Organization Public Forum this week in Geneva. Formally, the forum is a harmless exercise in putting together panel discussions aimed at brainstorming about the future of trade and an opportunity for the global …
Emily Rees assesses the impact of this Sunday’s Brazilian presidential election on European investments in Latin America’s largest economy and what sort of role the new administration will likely play in helping to secure a trade agreement with the EU. In an exceedingly polarised political climate, Brazilians are expected to …
He’s done it again: US President Donald Trump took credit for clinching a “wonderful” deal with Canada after Washington and Ottawa said they had reworked the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement just weeks after Mexico accepted a revision of the trilateral pact. Sunday’s announcement came six days after Trump finalised …
There will be little this week in terms of formal EU FTA negotiation rounds nor intense legislative activity: much more in the coming weeks! Lots of internal wrangling, of course, not least at the informal meeting of trade ministers in Innsbruck, Austria, on Friday. Hot topics of the moment: investment …
Below some highlights of this week’s trade committee meeting in Brussels, and a little update on the EU-Australia FTA talks. In case you missed them, check out our other articles this week on no-deal Brexit here and here, the EU’s food export bonanza, trilateral EU-Japan-US discussions on China and WTO, CETA, and the …
Donald Trump signed his first major trade deal on Monday, an update to the US pact with Korea that the president called a “very big deal” that is “very, very good for American farmers”. More sober assessments are that the revisions to the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement are modest and …
Canada and the EU hosted their first CETA Joint Committee meeting. The committee’s role is to oversee the implementation of the trade agreement. In fact, the meeting mainly dealt with demands made on it which are not in the treaty.
A trilateral meeting among the trade chiefs of the United States, Japan and the EU held in New York committed the three World Trade Organization members to launch common initiatives to overhaul the Geneva-based institution. This trilateral format of meetings started with the aim to address common concerns on – …
