The African Free Trade Agreement: under which conditions will it succeed?

The irony facing many developing countries today is that increased food trade and the implications of globalization has created a situation where certain segments of the population are simply put, eating too much, while just in their proximity lies a more significant segment of the population who are suffering from the complete opposite, malnutrition. This policy brief aims at explaining this double sided sword. ...

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 nar ...

تعتبر 2018 بلا شك نقطة تحول في تطور الاقتصاد العالمي. أوروبا، بعد أن بدأت في الخروج من الأزمة في عام 2017 ، من المرجح أن تدخل مرحلة نمو قوي ومستدام بفضل الزيادة الهيكلية في الإنت°اج الصناعي، إضافة الى الانعكاسات الإيجابي°ة للمشروع الإصلاحي المؤيد لأوروبا موحدة الذي يحمله الثن°ائي الفرنسي الألماني. كما ان آسيا تستمر في تأكيد مكانتها كمحرك رئيسي للاقتصاد العالمي، حيث اصبحت ثلاثة بلدان من اسيا )الصين واليابان والهند( تنتمي لقائمة أكبر خمسة اقتصادات عالمية في عام 2018 . هذه التطورات تدف ...

L’agriculture africaine a connu dernièrement une croissance relativement élevée, quoique peu résiliente et tirée principalement par l’extensification. Malgré sa diversité, les niveaux de production restent insuffisants pour autonomiser le continent surtout pour ce qui est des produits alimentaires de base. En misant sur l’intégration, des marges de progrès se présentent aux pays africains pour améliorer l’écosystème de l’agriculture africaine et ses performances. Il s’agit de puiser ...

The second United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG2) includes the goal to: “End hunger and achieve food security and improved nutrition” by 2030. While such an ambitious goal will clearly involve a wide range of policies and actors, this policy brief focuses on the role of trade policies in affecting food and nutrition security. Extensive and frequently contentious, debate swirls about whether trade in agricultural products is beneficial or detrimental for food security, pa ...

President Trump’s actions on trade have not quite matched his rhetoric, but the worst may be to come. Though the political opposition to his protectionism is formidable, so are his conviction and determination and he possesses a wide array of instruments to pursue his goals. The trade doctrine he has espoused makes for trade policy instability both at home and abroad. It may lead to a large deterioration in the operating environment of international business. America’s tradedependen ...

After many decades of expansion, incomes and standards of living have never been better in many parts of the world. Yet, global trade and the prospects of growth still seem uncertain, and protectionism seems to be on the rise. In developed countries, there is anxiety over the loss of the manufacturing jobs that once absorbed a large share of the labor force and created a middle class that formed the core of democracy. Most middle-income countries have not yet been able to make the t ...

Current technological developments in manufacturing are likely to lead to a partial reversal of the wave of fragmentation and global value chains that was at the core of the rise of North-South trade from 1990 onwards. At the same time, China – the main hub of the global-growth-cum-structural-change of that period - may attempt to extend the previous wave through its “One Belt, One Road” initiative. ...

Despite the threat posed by right-wing nationalism, left wing populism, and protectionism, this is not the end of globalization. The most likely scenario is a continuation of globalization at a rate like that of the last ten years and perhaps even acceleration as the world catches up on lost time in the wake of the financial crisis and its many aftershocks. However, in recent years a formidable resistance to globalization has arisen, and the risk of a sharp and temporary slowdown in ...