Chinese actors have become directly involved in such projects against a backdrop of sharpening debates about sustainability and other consequences of large-scale infrastructure projects. This is especially true in protected areas such as land populated by Indigenous groups and conservation units. A notable example is the Ferrogrão project, a major railway line designed to cross sections of the Amazon and Cerrado to deliver goods to Brazilian ports.

This paper examines the diverse ways that Brazilian and Chinese actors have learned from each other as they negotiate the terms of these deals. It also explores how these learning processes have been conditioned by intense domestic political debates over these projects in Brazil. Official documents and secondary sources reveal that, rather than a set Chinese way of doing business or a stock Brazilian response, such projects entail dynamic institutional learning. Such learning is shaped not only by the particulars of the Ferrogrão project but also by Chinese actors’ broader engagement with Brazilian infrastructure projects over the past ten years.

To read the full article from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, please click here. 

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To read the original report from the Information Technology Industry Council and the National Foreign Trade Council, please visit here.

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I focus exclusively on the economic considerations associated with China’s integration into the world trading system. Though the importance of security, geopolitics, and concerns about human rights in shaping China policy is evident, I leave those issues to others better equipped to deal with them. I take an outcome- and data-driven approach to evaluate China’s trade relations and, where possible, I try to avoid the legalistic WTO- centered approach taken in many discussions of the subject. This is because what determines trade outcomes is not the fine print of trade agreements, but the general direction policymakers adopt and the actions of firms. Furthermore, with the WTO stalled, the big changes in policy are occurring outside that vital organization.

Even though they are normally the subject of distinct jurisprudence, I treat international trade and foreign investment as two sides of the same coin, which in economic terms is what they typically are. For example, trade in services is carried out predominantly through foreign investment (Mode 3 Foreign Establishment). In the era of complex global value chains, it is difficult to promote trade—whether in manufacturing or services— without promoting foreign investment. Often, when I refer to ‘trade’ I convey messages that also apply to foreign investment. I refer to the United States and its main allies (the European Union, Japan, and the UK) as the ‘West’ or the ‘Western powers’.

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The COVID-19 shock has exacerbated the struggles of many emerging-market and developing economies (EMDEs) to repay their external debt. One of the most urgent challenges relates to debt owed to China, whose lending spree under its Belt and Road Initiative and other programs has played an outsized role in what amounts to a crisis for many countries. The scope of the problem is striking. China is owed more than $100 billion, or 57 percent of all debt owed to official creditors by the countries that need help the most. China is not a member of the Paris Club of official creditors, which coordinates, within a multilateral framework, the resolution of general sovereign illiquidity or unsustainable external debt of EMDEs. There is an urgent need to put in place more effective, long-term solutions to help durably lower the risks of prolonged debt difficulties in EMDEs. These problems could be partly addressed by creating creditor committees to coordinate debt relief with China. The Group of Twenty (G20) has taken some steps to include creditor committees in the context of the Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), but only for low-income countries that qualify for the DSSI and only for official creditors. To better address debt distress, it needs to extend the approach, especially to middle-income debtor countries. 

To read the full report, please click here. 

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The launch of the Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) negotiations on e-commerce among a group of WTO members in 2019 was a significant trade policy development. Participation of a diverse group of WTO members with markedly differing policy preferences, contrasted with the non-participation of a large number of developing countries, in the midst of rapidly evolving digital ecosystems, business models and regulatory requirements, point to the highly complex nature of the negotiations. The negotiations would require finding a delicate balance in reconciling different regulatory practices and priorities across countries with respect to such sensitive public policy areas as privacy, personal data protection, competition, consumer protection and cyber security, as well as industrialization objectives for the digital economy.

One key question that confronts trade negotiators is what negotiated outcome would allow developing countries – both participant and non-participant – to harness potential benefits of e-commerce for sustainable development. The digital divide is still significant within and among countries, and many developing countries are yet to develop their own national policy frameworks to support their ability to harness the evolving digital economy.

Whether and how the outcome of the JSI negotiations should be multilateralized remain key questions that need to be addressed. Defining the JSI outcome as a plurilateral agreement or a regional trade agreement (RTA) does not appear to settle the institutional standing of the future e-commerce agreement. Procedurally, multilateralization, and agreement for a plurilateral agreement within the WTO framework, would require consensus, including from those WTO members that have opted not to participate in the negotiations.

In this connection, there is a need for careful consideration of the implementation mechanisms that would facilitate greater participation and possible future multilateralization of any negotiated outcome. Among the built-in mechanisms that could facilitate the gradual implementation are modulated commitments, so that developing countries could gradually assume a higher level of commitments in differentiated time frames. Some transitional implementation mechanisms, such as a scheduling approach of the type used in WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), which allows parties to take into account individual countries’ implementation capacities, capacity-building support and capacity acquisition, might provide useful lessons.

The TFA-type implementation mechanism would not substitute the need for adequately defining the scope of the agreement and designing the content of the rules. As some proposed rules are novel issues for national regulatory systems and for the multilateral trading system, there is a need to carefully assess the development implications of internationally legally binding commitments which may constrain countries’ policy options. Additionally, if rules are warranted, how they can be designed to best cater for individual countries public policy and development needs should be adequately addressed. 

To read the full report, click here.

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Gérald Estur is a coordinator, editor and collaborating author, international cotton trade consultant, and former Statistician of the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC), Washington, DC, USA.

To read the original report, please visit here

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