Trade

The February 20 United States Supreme Court decision against President Donald Trump’s use of the U.S. International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to establish tariffs has led him to resort to other legal instruments. So-called U.S. reciprocal tariffs on countries set out in April 2025 were based on IEEPA, as were tariffs that allegedly punished countries for allowing fentanyl into the U.S. Trump tried to evade the constraints presented by other legal instruments that could f ...

There is a story told by Václav Havel, the Czech dissident writer who later became president after the fall of communism. In his essay The Power of the Powerless, Havel describes a shopkeeper who, every morning, places a sign in his window reading: “Workers of the world, unite!” He does not believe in it. Nor do the people around him. Yet the sign remains. ...

Divergent regulatory regimes for data, driven by different motivations, ranging from privacy protection in the European Union to information control in China, could eventually produce distinctively different, and possibly contradictory, bodies of data. Artificial-intelligence models trained on those datasets could produce differing and possibly even conflicting outputs. To the extent that AI outputs start to shape human perception and to influence decisions, in governments and ...

The U.S.–China technological rivalry has become a central axis of global economic and geopolitical competition. While the United States continues to lead in frontier innovation—most notably in advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI)—China has consolidated strengths in large-scale implementation, manufacturing capacity, and control over critical segments of global supply chains. These advantages are especially visible in clean energy technologies and in the processin ...

This article examines the quiet but profound implications of the erosion of U.S.-led hegemony for small and vulnerable states of the New South. While the post-1945 international order was never egalitarian, it offered predictability: power was organized through law, and sovereignty for weaker states rested less on justice than on procedural stability. Davos 2026 marked a turning point in the public acknowledgment of that system’s unraveling. Statements by leading Western figures rev ...

From the use of tariffs as a foreign policy instrument, to the weaponization of critical resources, and from targeted sanctions to attacks on critical infrastructure, economic security is at the forefront of international debates. The aggressive use of economic instruments for strategic purposes has become an explicit feature of international affairs, in a way not seen since the interwar period[1]. Beyond the weaponization of resources of all kinds, an increasing ‘monetization’ is u ...

This paper revisits Big Push industrialization theory in the context of open economies deeply integrated into global value chains (GVCs). While classical Big Push models emphasize demand complementarities and coordination failures in largely closed economies, many middle-income countries now industrialize through foreign-owned, import-intensive production networks. We develop an extended Big Push framework that incorporates GVC integration and import leakage, and show how these feat ...

This policy brief was originally published on : euromesco.net This paper examines the nexus between governance structures, digital transformation, sustainability, and port service efficiency through an international comparative lens, with a specific focus on the Tanger Med–Algeciras corridor in the strait of Gibraltar. Using global best practices—from Singapore to Busan and Kaohsiung—it explores how public-private coordination, digital innovation, and green transition policies ...

The U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean—the most significant since the Cuban Missile Crisis—comes at a moment when a new world order is taking shape, its contours still unclear, and in which the U.S. seeks to be more assertive in the Western Hemisphere. This disposition toward South America and the Caribbean was underscored by the recent publication of the new U.S. National Security Strategy, in which the Monroe Doctrine is explicitly invoked. This Policy Brief situates the devel ...

 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 ...