News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Monday, April 28, 2025
European Union trade ministers approached the issue of who they will support as the next World Trade Organization’s director-general with great prudence. The second ‘FAC Trade’ of the year held online today was an opportunity for EU capitals and the Commission to touch base on the bundle of recent WTO issues …
The United States Trade Representative has launched a new Section 301 investigation into the European Union’s plans to introduce a digital services tax as a means to fund its next seven-year budget. A new national security investigation could lead to tariffs on Austrian exports of vanadium. The Commission had tabled …
And the winner is…. the EU’s measurement instrument industry, perhaps. The European Commission recently published the final outcome of negotiations in the public procurement area agreed with Mexico as part of an upgrade of the EU Mexico Global Agreement. It took the two parties less than two years to upgrade …
European Union trade commissioner Phil Hogan announced he wanted a reset of trade relations with the United States during an interactive session with an e-audience of hundreds of listeners convened by the Irish think tank Institute on International and Economic Affairs on Wednesday. The two have plenty to talk about …
It took almost two years. In the summer 2018, the EU and Mexico announced they had concluded a wide-ranging renegotiation of a now twenty-year-old trade pact, pending a risky major negotiation ahead: market access in the area of public procurement. So much happened in the meantime, including an election in …
The European Union and the United States are focusing on getting over the coronavirus pandemic. But on trade, they are still ‘talking’, so to speak. Today the talk coming out of the EU is mildly tougher than usual. The EU announced a modest set of ‘rebalancing’ measures taken in response …
It’s that time of the year. The publication of the National Trade Estimate report by the US Trade Representative is a yearly ritual and must-read by any trade policy wonk in the world. Even non-US diplomats and policy makers sneakily look up the monumental 500-page annual document that lists all …
This week the focus has been on the soon-to-be-launched EU-UK trade negotiations and the real start to British post-Brexit trade policy. Our *four articles* (!) this week here. But London is not quite the centre of the world. Here other developments this week in EU trade. Hogan flies to Washington …
Trade sniping out of Washington just doesn’t seem to be ending. Bloomberg reported yesterday that the White House was mulling pulling out of the Government Procurement Agreement, a preferential accord among a subset of mostly rich-country members of the World Trade Organization. China and Russia are in the process of …
It’s been a week full of hoo haa around EU US agriculture trade. The EU put a bit of antidumping into its digital strategy. The European Parliament ratified the EU-UK withdrawal agreement on Wednesday and offered a moving good-bye ceremony to Britons. In London, Union Jack flags are being waved …
