News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Thursday, May 1, 2025
The EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations announced plans yesterday to upgrade their relationship to a ‘strategic partnership’. But palm oil and human rights disagreements continue to put sand in the wheels of the bilateral cooperation machinery. Strategic partner status tends to mean little in practice. For the …
A dense week lies ahead. Among the many meetings to watch let’s point out the following: the World Trade Organization mini-ministerial in Davos, a critical trade committee meeting in the European Parliament, and ministerial meetings with ASEAN and African Union leaders today in Brussels. Saving the WTO in the Swiss …
The European Commission tabled draft mandates to member states today to allow it to start trade negotiations with the United States. The move comes following the trade truce between the White House and the commission reached last July and following a meeting between trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström and US Trade Representative …
Globalisation and robotics will eventually improve the world, but they are creating competition for services jobs that is coming quickly and in ways that will seem very unfair, Richard Baldwin tells Borderlex. Workers and governments must prepare for the advance of ‘globotics’.
European Union quotas on imports of 26 steel product categories that have been in place provisionally since July will become definitive after member states gave the green light to the move today in Brussels. The European Commission also decided to go ahead with imposing safeguards on Indica rice from Cambodia …
Revived in 2016, he decades-old EU-Mercosur free trade talks were not concluded last year as hoped by proponents. The new Bolsonaro government in Brazil, Mercosur’s biggest player, has cast a shadow over the future of the negotiations. “Meetings will resume under the Argentinian pro-tempore presidency of Mercosur in the first quarter …
The United States Trade Representative’ s trade negotiating objectives with the European Union indicate bilateral talks ahead between Washington and Brussels will be difficult, if not outright impossible, to conclude.
This week won’t be too exciting in European Union trade, with no big-ticket items on the formal agenda for trade policy wonks to get excited about. Except for those who care about Brexit and its impact on trade with a departing EU member state that is worth about 16% of …
Venezuela struck back this week against US sanctions targeting the government of President Nicolás Maduro, filing a World Trade Organization complaint that accuses Washington of imposing “coercive trade-restrictive measures on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the context of attempts to isolate Venezuela economically”. The dispute is the latest touching …
This week has mainly been about everyone getting back to work. The EU’s top priority is the transatlantic relationship. Trade chief Cecilia Malmström, visiting Washington in the early days of January, signals just that. But were there actually any new developments this week on the planned trade deals? Not really, as …
