At the same time, Vladimir Putin was delivering a speech on the importance of private enterprise and foreign direct investment (FDI). Later, Putin said that privatization must be “fair and honest,” going out of his way to praise the private sector and promising to reduce state intervention.

Needless to say, most foreign investors prefer countries where their employees are safe. These events underscore a Russian economic backslide – one which began long before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine – and signal worse to come.

Putin knows (as does his central bank chief) that economic growth is tightly linked to productivity growth. Productivity growth comes mostly from the private sector. For countries like Russia, far from the technology frontier, access to goods, services, people and ideas from other countries is an important lifeline. FDI is a key part of that lifeline. Today, Russia risks losing much of the foreign investment the country has attracted over the years.

Nearly 1,000 companies have already curtailed operations in Russia. Economic and financial sanctions make it costly to do business there for risk of getting caught up in legal problems. There is also the reputational risk. A spokesman for Goldman Sachs said the investment banking company is winding down business operations “in compliance with regulatory and licensing requirements.” French luxury giant Chanel has shut its Russian stores, citing the need to comply with EU sanctions banning the sale of luxury goods in Russia priced over €300, or $312. A classic Chanel medium flap bag is over $8,000. Some rich Russian women are tearing up their Chanel. Meanwhile, mothers in Ukraine are being forced to uproot their families and flee the country they love.

As for the Russian economy, even before the war, it wasn’t thriving. “Russia doesn’t make anything,” President Obama stated back in 2014. “Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking.” A 2019 RAND report explains Russia’s shocking deterioration in detail.

As relations with the West freeze over, a complete trade embargo appears increasingly likely. Recent estimates show no readily available domestic substitution for high-tech intermediate inputs that Russian manufacturers need. For instance, imported semiconductor chips are necessary for industrial equipment, motor controls, switches, cars and hundreds of other consumer goods. But it is the curtailing of FDI by companies headquartered in allied countries that will hurt the most. Russia attracted an annual average of $24.1 billion in FDI from 2015 to 2019. That was down from the pre-Crimea annexation annual average of $36.3 billion from 2010 to 2014.

Coauthors and I estimate that an allied trade embargo against Russia would decrease its real GDP by an estimated 15 percent to 20 percent, and a big chunk of that impact (85 percent to be precise) is driven by FDI suspension or withdrawal. It turns out that curtailing allied FDI is a powerful sanction tool, inflicting colossal damage to the Russian economy at little net economic cost to allied and non-allied economies. Allied governments looking for more efficient sanctions should take note.

Speaking about the Russian economy in the face of sanctions, Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina noted how output would decline and inflation would exceed expectations. Grasping for a silver lining, she reportedly said the situation would “create opportunities for Russian businesses that previously couldn’t compete with imports.” And speaking at the State Duma recently, she reportedly called for new business models and said the Russian economy will enter a period of structural transformation.

In a recent op-ed in Kommersant, a Russian political and business newspaper, a prominent Russian CEO calls for embracing import substitution. There’s just one problem: To make things domestically, you still need access to the global marketplace. The author asks what kind of autarky Russia needs. Economic logic would lead one to answer “none.”

There is an undertone of panic in these comments. Understandably. While the word “globalization” doesn’t hold the same positive sway it did in the West a decade ago, no one faces involuntary self-sufficiency to the extent Russia may confront.

We have never seen a country go backwards as fast as it looks like Russia will.

To read the full article by The Hill, please click here. 

Christine McDaniel | The Hill

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The news headlines homed in on one aspect of the joint statement that urged China to respect the autonomy and human rights in Hong Kong and the situation in Xinjiang. There was also unprecedented support for stability across the Taiwan Strait – which China immediately denounced as illegal meddling with its internal affairs. President Biden may have failed to rally France and Germany into the jihad against China. But the statement has entrenched the two deeper regardless.

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Known associates of China sometimes like to challenge the “legitimacy” of G7. Other fellow Brussels pundits probably don’t share Beijing’s actual concern about G7, which is that China is not a member. Instead, critics point to the lack of “purpose” of G7 or its lack of efficacy, especially compared to the more technically oriented G20.

The criticism against G7 disregards how the two summits serve very different purposes: G7 of today is effectively a like-minded group that shares a history, yet not all the strategies going forward. In contrast, G20 is a policy coordination mechanism between the principal regional powers, where its members merely share a common aversion against tumbling backwards. And neither G7 nor G20 is very effective at what they do. But are there any viable alternatives? It would be a return to G2, to which Europe and Japan won’t be invited.

Yet, China’s systemic challenge is just one tent peg that grounds the big tent of the alliance. Still, the China peg determines how far the other pegs can stretch the fabric. A tech divide evidently continues to spook the seven countries. At the digital ministers’ meeting in late April, the US and its allies called for a reference on 5G vendor diversity in the summit conclusion but failed. Japan and the US had already pledged $4.5 billion towards developing indigenous alternatives although their home markets were already free from Chinese suppliers. The US Senate also tabled the Endless Frontier Act (later merged into the US Innovation and Competition Act) to promote a consortium of US and Chinese market entrants by displacing European and Korean 5G vendors. These proposals may not meet the non-discriminatory requirements on subsidies and technical standards laid down under the WTO.

Similarly, the US resists EU regulations against US platforms and online services using arbitrary thresholds that single out Silicon Valley. In other words, digital markets divide the G7 between those who want vendor diversity in technologies where Europe happens to be leading, yet not in online platforms where the US happens to be dominant – or vice versa. Instead, the final G7 leaders’ communique reiterates the need for “transparency, the openness of process and participation, relevance, and consensus-based decision-making” in line with referenced WTO agreements. The US-led Open RAN Alliance is unlikely to meet any of these criteria.

But at its best, G7 is a preparatory meeting before a global consensus, similar to how APEC served that role before some bodog sportsbook review WTO ministerials. That is how G7 as a likeminded group (arguably more homogeneous than APEC) exert its influence. For example, the conflict over corporate taxation of services (unfairly epitomised as “digital tax”) approach its end with a compromise of a 15% minimum tax floor and a split of the tax revenues between destination and home jurisdictions. There’s still a great deal of strategic ambiguity left: Some countries might continue their tax deductions on intangibles or decide to go after small businesses. Just imagine a mom-pop shop or a freelance architect paying corporate taxes in every country where their clients reside. Some will surely ignore the G7 consensus outright.

From Cornwall to Brussels

In a time of geopolitical gambits, intense lobbying and renewed interest in industrial policy, there are plenty of temptations and disagreements on both sides of the Atlantic. The truce on the Airbus-Boeing dispute may not herald a new transatlantic era, if it means that every window in the glasshouse has been broken and all legal remedies are exhausted. The only option that now remains is to forgive ourselves our common sins.

Then there is the small matter of ending Section 232 measures on steel, which remains a sacred goal for the German stakeholders. Ending the tariffs is also an exorcising ritual that Merkel needs to love America again. But lifting the 232s remains a political risk for the Biden-Harris administration – at least until it secures its second term. Applying pressure through EU tariff retaliation against the swing states (merely helping the Republicans) or carbon tariffs are arguably just self-harming.

The truth is that Europe and America continue to be antagonists in their own right. But unlike Beijing, Brussels wields a formidable soft power that legitimises tech policies in other countries that are hostile to US industrial interests, while the US has billions of Federal funds for industrial policies its disposal. Just like the Airbus-Boeing conflict – services tax, platform regulations, or illegal 5G subsidies are transatlantic issues we bring to the OECD, WTO, G7 or G20 for collateral damage. A cynic might say that the EU and the US should spare the rest of the world of their transatlantic champagne problems.

In that regard, the bilateral Trade and Tech Council seems like a natural progression and a deliverable worthy of an EU-US summit. But we should not forget that much of the regulatory coordination was already taking place, discretely at technical levels in areas like export control, third-country trade or standardisation. TTC trace its origins with other similar ideas to the final days of the Trump administration. But if the intention is to triangulate against harmful third country practices, one might argue that some partners, some of who hold critical leverages against China, went missing along the way.

Also, institutionalising that bilateral dialogue is not entirely risk-free. Publicity creates an incentive for blame games, where one accuses the other of not “engaging seriously” and melodramatic walk-outs, just because the other side happens to disagree. Like its predecessors – TEC and TTIP – TTC will attract lobbyists, NGOs, and others with no genuine interests in transatlantic mechanisms. Instead, they are merely trying to lobby for new domestic rules through the backdoor.

Hosuk Lee-Makiyama is the director of European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) and a leading author on trade diplomacy, EU-Far East relations and the digital economy.

To read the original commentary from The European Centre for International Political Economy, please visit here

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Biden left Washington for his first trip abroad on a mission to rally partners to work together, “demonstrating the capacity of democracies to both meet the challenges and deter the threats of this new age.” These challenges include the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis—on both of which G7 leaders failed to be truly ambitious—as well as the need to “[confront] the harmful activities of the governments of China and Russia.”

The atmosphere at the G7 was of determination to show leadership and of warmth among leaders—with the exception of the host, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was under pressure from pretty much everyone to avoid a trade war with the EU over the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Brexit yet again tainted the unity of the West.

Of these summits, the U.S.-EU appointment today, June 15, is the least glamorous and the most under-reported. Yet it is the first summit between the two sides since 2014 and the first test of what can be achieved through U.S.-EU cooperation.

It is clear that the United States’ new method is to work with its partners to forward its goals, starting with containing China’s expansion. What has received less elaboration are its goals with regard to Europe.

Biden had warm words for the EU as “strong and vibrant,” but the details of what the two can do together are yet to emerge.

Key positions relevant to Europe also are awaiting appointments, such as the U.S. ambassadors to NATO and the EU.

The EU, on the other hand, has been quite disciplined on the transatlantic agenda, showing that it has learned a few lessons from the recent past.

First of all, EU leaders have avoided squabbling to get the first photo shot with Joe Biden, the first invitation to the White House—it will be Angela Merkel in July—, and gracefully accepted that the EU institutions would be the first port of call after NATO and G7.

Secondly, they have been remarkably united in their public messaging and avoided trumpeting unrealistic wishlists or grandstanding big ideas.

Thirdly, the EU has been quietly but proactively working on a bilateral agenda to translate good intentions into practical steps and deeds. This is not news headline material, but it displays a more mature approach to the transatlantic relationship.

What then to expect of the EU-U.S. summit?

Today’s summit will echo some of the commitments made by leaders at the G7 on ending the pandemic and supporting all countries in investing in a green economy. But the flesh on the bones is to be found in what the EU and the United States decide to pursue bilaterally.

Back in December the EU had proposed to create an EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC). This is likely to be one of the most significant deliverables of today’s summit. There are multiple reasons why this decision is important. Two stand out.

Firstly, it represents a practical response to the United States’ call to cooperate on the challenges posed by China, a politically controversial quest from the European perspective, where views on China differ from those of the United States and among EU members. Deconstructing the challenges posed by China will help EU member states deal with specific issues rather than accept the overarching narrative of democracy versus authoritarianism that the Biden administration is embracing.

Secondly, it will provide a semi-institutionalized space for dialogue through which the EU and the United States can reach constructive consensus but also manage their differences, which are many, complex, and require the mobilization of several departments of government, which is complicated in itself.

A commitment to greater systematic cooperation on a wider range of international issues is also likely to emerge from the summit. The EU-U.S. dialogue on China is seen as a positive initiative and the precedent of the EU, United States, UK, and Canada coordinating sanctions against China for the treatment of the Uighur minority earlier this year also speaks in favor of more regular and institutionalized dialogue. It could provide a format relevant to other issues, such as coordinating positions on dealing with Russia.

Then there are things to watch out for.

The TTC and, potentially, an EU-U.S. dialogue on Russia in the mold of the existing dialogue on China are ways for the EU to respond to Washington’s call for action on China and Russia. The broader narrative framing global politics as a struggle between authoritarianism and democracy is much harder for the EU as a whole to embrace.

There have been significant shifts in the EU’s views of China during the past couple of years, part at the urging of the United States, part as a growing realization that China’s economic and financial investments in the European continent have the political objectives of sowing divisions and building vulnerabilities to and dependencies on China, and part as a result of Beijing’s wolf warrior diplomacy, which has taken an explicitly aggressive turn since the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet views in the EU on the democracy versus authoritarian paradigm differ widely—from countries that are firm transatlanticists but are abandoning democracy domestically to those whose democracies are thriving but which are deeply interconnected bodog online casino with the Chinese economy and/or Russian energy.

Hesitancy about the United States also continues to hover over the constructive agenda and the optimism that will come out of today’s summit.

The EU is painfully aware that the window of opportunity for the transatlantic reset could be narrow and must prepare for the eventuality that after 2024 it might be left out in the cold—again. The union needs to simultaneously build back better with the United States and on its own.

Rosa Balfour is director of Carnegie Europe. Her fields of expertise include European politics, institutions, and foreign and security policy.

To read the original commentary from Carnegie Europe, please visit here.

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Yet this year, there was a long communiqué, and it had a full section even entitled “Free and Fair Trade.” Once more, the G7 committed to championing “the rules-based multilateral system” that the previous US President so disparaged.

The G7 statement now calls “for the world’s leading democratic nations to unite behind a shared vision.” That vision is “to ensure the multilateral trading system is reformed, with a modernised rulebook and a reformed World Trade Organization (WTO) at its centre.”

This general commitment is followed by specific ones. The first stresses the need to make “progress” for the WTO’s next Ministerial Conference in November, with the hope of “a meaningful conclusion” of negotiations on fisheries subsidies. Meanwhile, subsidized fleets deplete the oceans of fish. The baseline for progress may be low, but engagement is critical.

The second expresses concern about “forced labour in global supply chains.” The statement does not call out China by name, possibly because of pushback from other G7 members, but it specifically mentions “the agricultural, solar, and garment sectors,” all of which involve production in Xinjiang.

The final paragraph commits to working together and “with the wider WTO membership” to address major issues that implicate China. Once more, China is not mentioned expressly, but the US clearly has China in its scope on “forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, lowering of labour and environmental standards to gain competitive advantage, market-distorting actions of state owned enterprises, and harmful industrial subsidies,” and “transparency.” As I have argued elsewhere, singling out China by a so-called “alliance of democracies” is not just risky, but a mistake. The issues, however, are real.

Perhaps most interesting is the G7’s commitment to advance the “proper functioning of the WTO’s negotiating function and dispute settlement system” (emphasis added). This could have been worded more elegantly (“functioning” of a “function”?), but it is an advance.

Unstated is that there is tension—if not outright contradiction—between the G7 commitment to a “rules-based multilateral system” and the US neutering of WTO dispute settlement. Here the US remains alone among the G7 and the “broader membership.” The communiqué nonetheless offers hope here, signaling that the G7 aims to see WTO dispute settlement “function properly.”

On this front, the Biden administration’s strategy, it seems, is first to resolve disputes over the Trump tariffs imposed on G7 and other US allies, against which the allies retaliated. Resolving this dispute is politically tricky. The tariffs provide protection to the US steel industry, and that industry is in swing states that are critical for the 2022 election. The control of the US Senate and House are at stake. The Biden administration will thus proceed carefully, biding its time, consulting with labor union constituencies. Still, the two sides are making progress, agreeing to suspend new tariffs while they negotiate.

If the Biden administration can settle tariff disputes with its G7 allies, then maybe, just maybe, the US will be in a cleaner position to make concrete proposals to return to binding multilateral trade dispute settlement. Then the system might be “rule-based” once more.

Gregory Shaffer is Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine and author of Emerging Powers in the World Trading System: The Past and Future of International Economic Law.

To read the original commentary from WorldTradeLaw, please visit here

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The original Atlantic Charter was a foundational document in transatlantic relations. It was struck by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in 1941 after they met on board the USS Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. It was a way of signaling their intention to work together for the same cause in wartime.

The key elements were a preference for an open international system that would allow for self-determination, the removal of trade barriers, freedom of the seas, disarmament, and peace. Neither side was seeking territorial gains (as had happened in the First World War).

The charter aimed to sketch out American and British aims for the Second World War and beyond. And, to a surprising degree, its spirit and intentions prevailed. The results found expression in the United Nations system, in NATO, in post-war decolonialization, in world trade arrangements. The document has come to be recognized not just as a key element in the victorious alliance against Nazi Germany, but also as an expression of a new American vision for the world—one that the United States (largely) shared with the weary titan on the other side of the Atlantic.

This moment—between these two iconic figures, engaged in an epic struggle against the ultimate evil—is magical; it still exerts a pull on the imagination that most diplomacy cannot rival. But that allure shouldn’t distract from the fact that the charter was not merely a vague wish list. It had a concrete function in the very tough relationship between two wartime allies.

The text was idealistic, but also a compromise. The United Kingdom had hoped to draw the United States into the war, but that would take until December 1941 and the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States was keen to relieve the United Kingdom of its colonial possessions and its protectionist arrangements with its colonies, and only partially succeeded. FDR and Churchill, though they fought side by side against Nazism, could not have been more different in their instincts.

The agreement between Joe Biden and Boris Johnson (two men who are perhaps even more unalike than their wartime counterparts) is in many ways not comparable to the original Atlantic Charter. Neither (with the greatest of respect) are Joe and Boris to the original FDR and Winston. And though this is a dramatic moment in world affairs, it is not 1941.

Nonetheless, the new charter reflects a shared sense of the values that are most vital to champion in the world, including democracy, open societies, and a rules-based world order. The second iteration has also been modernized, with references to cybersecurity, disinformation, and the countries’ nuclear deterrents.

And once again there is a fight underway and a need for solidarity to win it. The idea behind these declarations is to signal—to friends and foes alike—not only a common orientation and direction of travel, but also a common purpose.

The rise of China presents both countries with difficulties that are more complex than those posed by the rise of Russia after the Second World War, in the sense that the United States and United Kingdom will remain very closely entangled with China’s economy even as they clash with its political leaders.

As Washington seeks to build a web of alliances to counter China, it is tapping into long-established cultural and political ties with some countries (Australia, and Canada, for example) while also reaching out to partners that are less certain in the struggle with Beijing and do not wholly share US sentiments about open markets, open societies, or democracy. The United Kingdom falls squarely in the former camp. It is not the decisive ally that it was in 1941, but it remains a hugely valuable one. Though it is far from being an Indo-Pacific power, the United Kingdom still has many diplomatic relationships to complement those of the United States. And while the United States and United Kingdom can’t aspire on their bodog sportsbook review own to set the agenda of the world’s democracies these days, they can show the way and encourage others to come along—a style of leadership more appropriate to 2021.

“Shared values” between the United Kingdom and the United States have, of course, concealed many differences over the years. Neither country was especially keen on democracy for all in 1941. In the United States, racial injustice has persisted for decades after the Atlantic Charter. The United Kingdom may have retreated rapidly from India following World War II, but it remained a colonial power for many years after the conflict. Yet even eighty years ago, both countries had a sense of democracy as an important value and sought more than just the advantages of realpolitik.

The second Atlantic Charter, as with the first, is a moment in time in which the two countries are recommitting themselves to common purpose—a moment when they admit their differences (there are tensions over Northern Ireland, for example), but within the context of one of the closest international relationships in the world. That relationship is ultimately based not just on memories of wartime struggle or the Magna Carta or even the narrow interests of their deeply intertwined banking systems, but on popular solidarity between the two nations and a concrete commitment to work together to shape the better, fairer, and safer world that could lie ahead.

It is important to agree on what one is fighting against, but also on what one is fighting for. About the latter, the United States and the United Kingdom can, largely, agree.

Andrew Marshall is the vice president of communications for the Atlantic Council.

To read the original commentary, please visit here

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In Denmark, two members of parliament, Uffe Elbæk and Katarina Ammitzbøll, as well as two civil society activists, have been menaced with legal proceedings by China. Their supposed transgression? In November, they invited Ted Hui, an elected member of the Hong Kong Legislative assembly to the country for meetings. From Denmark, he then continued on to a life in exile in the United Kingdom.

Hui was facing protest-related charges in Hong Kong as part of the crackdown on the democratic opposition. The Danish citizens are targeted as having helped him evade legal proceedings in the Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic. Regina Ip, a local lawmaker, undoubtedly trying to please the new CCP-controlled Hong Kong, has called for the extradition and prosecution of the Danish parliamentarians. During the last month, Denmark’s domestic intelligence services alerted the four Danes to the danger of travelling to and extradition from third countries with which Hong Kong or China has relevant agreements.

When China’s government introduced the National Security Law in Hong Kong last year, many legal observers shuddered at the extraterritorial reach of its Article 38, which could extend to indicting individuals worldwide for what the authorities might label as abetting secession in Hong Kong. The Danish case seems to be an attempt by the CCP to explore how far it can take this new version of lawfare against its perceived domestic and foreign enemies. Still, no formal extradition request has been made, although the Chinese embassy has gone as far as asking Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for legal assistance on the matter.

Such cases carry a potential chilling effect on freedom of speech in democracies. Increasingly, anyone researching or commenting on China—like myself, who also met with Ted Hui in Copenhagen last year—know that they cannot travel to the country any longer without fearing arbitrary detention. I am also now on the Chinese sanctions list too through my workplace, the Alliance of Democracies Foundation.

China’s lawfare against democracies and their citizens is also on display currently in the city of Dandong with the show-trials against two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, whose guilt on spurious charges seem predetermined by the CCP. The real reason for their imprisonment is retaliation for the detention of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in Canada on an extradition claim from the United States for sanctions violations.

Similarly, last week, the EU’s human rights sanctions on Chinese individuals for human right abuses in Xinjiang was reciprocated with Chinese sanctions on European parliamentarians, China researchers, and democracy organizations such as the Alliance of Democracies Foundation. As Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has remarked, “While we sanction abuses of human rights, Beijing sanctions democracy. We cannot accept this.”

The democratic world needs to stand united and respond to these new lawfare techniques by China. There is no easy tit for tat possible. Democracies cannot resort to similar acts of hostage diplomacy. That would debase their systems of rule of law.

As one response, Canada has kickstarted a multilateral initiative against arbitrary detention, but it still lacks enforcement mechanisms to change China’s calculus. In another good initiative, diplomats from other democracies such as the members of the EU and the United States showed up outside of the trials in Dandong to demonstrate solidarity with Kovrig and Spavor. This gesture would have been even stronger if more representatives of Asian democracies had also taken part. 

The Biden’ administration is planning a Global Summit of Democracy later this year. Biden describes our current period as defined by the competition between autocracy and democracy. Coming to grips with China’s new lawfare techniques is an urgent task for an alliance of democracies.  

To read the original piece from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, please click here

Jonas Parello-Plesner is a non-resident senior fellow in GMF’s Asia program. His research focuses on Asia and China and relations with EU and the United States. Parello-Plesner has also worked at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) as a Senior Policy Fellow with a focus on European-Chinese relations. He served as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark’s Senior Advisor on China and North East Asia from 2005-2009 and has provided testimony on Chinese investments in Europe to the U.S. Congress and European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committees. His co-authored book, China’s Strong Arm: Protecting Citizens and Assets Abroad, was published in 2015 by IISS/Routledge and launched at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

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Today—Monday, March 8—marks International Women’s Day, this year aptly themed “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.” As the agenda takes shape for the Group of Twenty (G20) presidency—which passed to Italy in December 2020 in the midst of the coronavirus crisis—to address the pandemic, climate change, and other transnational challenges, the bloc must take steps to ensure women are central to the more equitable and inclusive recovery that it seeks, the world’s women need, and the global economy demands.

Gender inequality is certainly not a new feature of G20 economies; only around a third or less of women are formally employed in India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and low rates of female labor-force participation have long mired economies worldwide. But since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, women’s employment rates have fallen precipitously in many nations, usually at a quicker pace than those of men. In the United States, women suffered 55 percent of job losses in the first few months of COVID-related economic restrictions. By late 2020, some 2.5 million women had lost their jobs or dropped out of the workforce. In Latin America, women were 50 percent more likely than men to lose their jobs as the pandemic took hold—a figure that does not include losses among the large number of women working in the informal economy or performing unpaid work. In Turkey, surveyed women experienced higher levels of job loss than men did after the spread of COVID-19. Across the Middle East and North Africa region, estimates indicate that women will suffer a third of job losses even though they represent only a fifth of the labor force.

bodog casino Even when women can find formal employment, wage disparities between women and men have been a key driver of inequality for years: women in the United States make only eighty-two cents for every dollar earned by men, and the gender pay gap is 23 percent globally. The global average of men’s overall income is nearly double that of women, due in part to the fact that women are more likely to be employed in lower-paid, lower-skill work with more job insecurity and fewer benefits.

Youth employment has also been highly vulnerable to the pandemic, dealing young women a double blow. In Argentina, for example, unemployment among those aged fourteen to twenty-nine increased significantly in the first quarter of 2020, to 18 percent, but the figure rose to 24 percent for young women. In the United Kingdom, sectors that shut down due to social-distancing measures employed 25 percent of young men under twenty-five years old but 36 percent of young women in the same age cohort. These sectors employed just 13 percent of workers over age twenty-five.

Beyond employment, women’s enterprises have also been further imperiled by the virus. The latest World Bank Findex in 2017 found that the financial-inclusion gap between men and women, measured in terms of having a bank account, remained at nine percentage points in favor of men in developing economies—unchanged since 2011. In several countries, even those in the middle-income strata, this gap is much more significant. In one COVID-19 impact survey of 30,000 small and micro enterprises worldwide, the gender disparity between shuttered businesses owned by women versus by men reached as high as 10 percent in countries with strict lockdowns. Women around the world also carry out as much as triple the unpaid household and care hours as men do. From India to Japan, and across Europe and the Americas, wage inequality combined with cultural or social norms push women to forego work, especially because of care constraints.

These dynamics account in part for COVID-19’s calamitous, disproportionate effect on women’s earning opportunities across advanced, emerging, and developing countries alike, putting economic participation and prosperity further from their reach. The Women 20 (W20) engagement group has been the traditional hub for consideration of gender issues at the G20. But to address the multitude of acute challenges faced by the world’s women, G20 leaders and finance ministers must now make use of the full range of policy instruments at their disposal. These include gender-responsive budgeting, entrepreneurial and employment tax incentives, healthcare, social-protection measures, improved property rights, increased hiring of women in government, and the collection of disaggregated data to better identify deficits and measure change. The G20 should also take a more integrated and intersectional approach, ensuring women’s inclusion across all of the forum’s engagement and working groups.

The Business 20 (B20), for example, should encourage businesses to promote women to management and decision-making roles; champion employer-provided childcare, healthcare and paid-leave policies, and digital access to close the gender digital divide; and expand access to the platform economy, workplace safety, and gender-elastic lending products and services, including loan-repayment deferments. The Energy Transition and Climate Sustainability Working Group should highlight women’s successes to entice more women to enter non-traditional sectors and engage men and families to shift social norms. Targeted lending and carveouts for women-owned small- and medium-sized enterprises in green business should also be promoted.

The Labour Working Group and Labour 20 (L20) should place the specific needs of women workers—including those in the informal economy—atop their agenda. That should include addressing issues related to wage gaps, childcare, upskilling and on-the-job training, and sexual harassment. As it tackles the education and employment crises, the Education Working Group and Youth 20 (Y20) should focus on young women’s training, skills, and digital access, as well as financial inclusion for productive self-employment and entrepreneurship. These efforts should embrace the future of work and the post-pandemic economy, including ensuring downstream STEM and technical vocational training for the emerging green, orange, care, and digital economies.

The Development Working Group can have an impact in this space by steering multilateral and bilateral donor resources toward the needs of women and girls in low-income countries. Given rapid urbanization in G20 countries and cities worldwide, the Urban 20 (U20) has an important opportunity to advance gender-sensitive urban planning, job creation, and city governance.

In its handover communiqué, the 2020 Saudi W20 stated that “G20 leaders must pave the way for equitable economic recovery where women, as equal partners and key economic actors, are part of the solution.” The Italian presidency must urgently heed this call and advance an energetic, holistic, women-centered agenda that mobilizes resources, directs financing, and ushers in data-informed policies. What’s needed is a strategy that both curbs the damage that the pandemic has inflicted on women and unlocks opportunities for reimagining women’s education, employment, and entrepreneurship in the post-pandemic era. If it succeeds in implementing this two-track strategy, the Italian G20 will be a boon to inclusive growth in member states and the global economy.

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Two years ago, US President Donald J. Trump welcomed then President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker to the White House to face off escalating trade tensions between Washington and Brussels, and ultimately to call a truce. It was an interesting sell for staffers on both sides of the Atlantic. US officials argued that ultimately the best thing to do was get the two in a room together to hash it out and give negotiators a fresh mandate after the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) had fizzled and the US president threatened tariffs on automobiles—a cleverly identified Achilles heel for European exporters. For those of us in the Rose Garden that day, watching with disbelief as the two leaders delivered a hastily assembled joint statement that set us on the road to new talks, there was a giddy sense of relief but also a long sigh of recognition—our work would never be as easy as getting Trump and Juncker to kiss.

In his recent address at Chatham House, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer criticized the EU for negotiating seventy-seven individual trade agreements globally, promulgating European and not internationally arbitrated standards. Whether you believe the EU is justified in doing this is a matter of opinion, but what was more striking in this comment was not the criticism of Brussels, but what that number revealed about the transatlantic dilemma. Europe can take home ancillary prizes but the golden goose—an agreement with the United States—remains out of reach.

TTIP grew too big for its britches because of the sheer scope of the negotiating mandate, as experts and politicos set aside the prospect of a narrower agreement in the glow of the moment. But the rhetoric went even further. The United States and the European Union are a community of values—transparency, democracy, open markets—” so there is no reason why we can’t reach an agreement,” officials repeated, and “this should be the easiest thing.” It’s time to turn this argument on its head and manage expectations. Moving forward, let’s acknowledge that this is one of the hardest and most nuanced negotiations out there.

The United States and the EU are nearly equal-sized markets and are competitors. In many sectors they are near perfect competitors—witness the Airbus-Boeing standoff playing out in real-time—meaning there are fewer comparative advantages available to make concessions worthwhile. To take an easy example, let’s wager that both the United States and the EU want to import cheap textiles from Vietnam, and not from each other. Previous negotiations had gotten most tariff lines to zero, but the going gets tough on standards and regulation. Washington and Brussels each present two sophisticated and advanced regulatory frameworks, with equal claim to fairness and transparency, and an equally long list of the other’s transgressions. bodog sportsbook review Geopolitics aside, it’s hard to see, by the analogy of game theory or just a chessboard, why either would give way.

But where can we show some leg? Tax and state aid. Let’s try and give an optimistic case for both.

Finance ministries have a way of getting along even while fighting. Like lawyers, economists like to exchange friendly fire over principle. The Trump administration’s sweeping tax reform caused many in Europe to bristle, not over politics but out of jealousy that the United States could push corporate rates through a glass floor. The OECD negotiations on digital taxation—derailed just as much by Congress as the coronavirus—will continue despite USTR’s bullseye on French wine. The European Court of Justice’s rejection of the Commission’s case against Apple last week is a lob into America’s court. Brussels had wrongly presumed that a proxy battle with a US tech company could lay a stake in EU tax harmonization because taking on Ireland would never survive a veto by the same. There is also reason for optimism that individual EU member states introducing autonomous regimes at the promise of the quick windfall will see their efforts backfire, especially as tech holds up a greater percentage of the corona-economy. The companies themselves have stopped trying to ax the concept and are now, reasonably, lobbying for clarity.

One of the greatest parries on the regulatory front surrounds state aid and public procurement, an unforgivable irony for two trade blocs waving the free trade flag. The United States has cleverly funneled sponsorship for technology innovation and heavy industry through defense budgets, and the Buy America Act, according to Brussels, is not even thinly veiled protectionism. Meanwhile, Washington maintains a longstanding bugaboo over Europe’s direct subsidies to key industries such as agriculture and manufacturing. In this area, both are equal sinners with constituencies that won’t take changes lightly. But things are moving. First, the coronavirus has shifted conversations on both sides of the Atlantic on what it means to be competitive to include structural changes within our economies. If the United States needs to introduce comprehensive unemployment insurance and a viable option for universal public health care, the European Union is learning the hard way (at the recent EU Summit for example) that fiscal heterogeneity is a lasting and dangerous holdover from the eurozone crisis.

Second, a parallel agenda in negotiations with China will eventually force a convergence of interests and tactics. Phase 2 of the proposed negotiations (when and if it starts) between Washington and Beijing, which should cover subsidies for state-owned enterprises, sounds a lot like the draft EU-China Investment Agreement (when and if those negotiations resume). The Capital Markets Working Group, comprised of US agencies examining the behavior of Chinese corporates in US markets, sounds like the EU’s recently amended competition policy, which requires third party participants to adhere to the rules of the Single Market. “Why are we going after each other when we need to go after China together?” is a common lament of the past years. On a hot, sticky July day in Washington, this author is cautiously optimistic that this convergence will occur in time to avoid irreparable damage to the global economy.

In the meantime, Brussels and Washington will chip away at the cracks in the areas identified two years ago in the Rose Garden. BusinessEurope’s excellent publication from this month provides an exhaustive list of a positive US-EU trade agenda. US and EU leaders don’t need to kiss (please don’t!), but they do need to recognize that fair competition, alongside cooperation, is the idea that our institutions dare to uphold.

Julia Friedlander is the C. Boyden Gray senior fellow and deputy director of the Global Business and Economics Program at the Atlantic Council. She has served as senior policy advisor for Europe at the US Treasury and director for European Union, Southern Europe, and Economic Affairs at the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019.

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House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) called the discussion “productive” and added that Lighthizer “provided assurances that our communications will remain frequent and thorough.”

Lighthizer on Friday notified Congress that Mexico and Canada had taken the necessary steps to comply with the deal, adding the pact would enter into force on July 1. The U.S. also sent a notification to Canada and Mexico saying it had completed the internal procedures needed for the deal to take effect.

“Today, my colleagues and I emphasized to the Ambassador that the USMCA’s new enforcement mechanisms must be more than simply words on a page, particularly with regard to workers’ rights and environmental protection,” Neal said in an April 27 statement. “We expect that the high level of engagement that occurred between USTR and House Democrats during the process of negotiating revisions to the USMCA will continue as we move forward with the agreement’s implementation.”

The lawmakers also asked USTR how the administration “anticipates the COVID-19 pandemic will affect nations’ ability to implement USMCA’s requirements,” the statement added.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), who also participated in Monday’s conference call, urged USTR to “listen” to its Labor Advisory Committee’s recommendations as the parties form a labor panel for the deal’s so-called rapid-response mechanism. The rapid-response tool, which provides for facility-based enforcement of the agreement’s labor obligations within stringent timelines, is the first of its kind in a U.S. trade deal.

As outlined in a protocol of amendment agreed to by the parties last December, the parties are required to “establish and maintain” three lists of labor panelists. By the date of USMCA’s entry into force, each party is required to appoint three individuals to one list each and “appoint, by consensus, three individuals to a joint list,” the protocol says. “The individuals in the joint list shall be nonnationals of either Mexico or the United States.”

USTR last month announced it was accepting applications from those interested in serving on the specialized labor panels. That process closed last week.

Additionally, the U.S. implementing bill calls for robust capacity-building via the creation of a 12-member independent labor-expert board to monitor and evaluate the implementation of Mexico’s labor reform and the country’s compliance with its labor obligations. The board must be composed of 12 members — four appointed by the Labor Advisory Committee and four each appointed by the U.S. House and Senate, with Democrats and Republicans in both chambers each choosing two members.

“Ambassador Lighthizer … should listen to the Labor Advisory Committee’s recommendations that we appoint rapid response panelists so strong enforcers are positioned to win the fight for American workers and Mexican workers,” Pascrell said in his statement following the call. “I was encouraged that Ambassador Lighthizer agreed with this underlying point. Having rapid response panelists who understand American labor rights is paramount to this new enforcement mechanism working. With implementation now weeks away, nothing is more important than making sure Mexico lives up to its end of this bargain, and I will be closely watching.”

In addition to the specialized labor panels, the U.S. committed to appointing labor attachés to facilitate the implementation of and compliance with Mexico’s labor reforms. According to the U.S. implementing bill, the Labor Department is required to hire up to five additional full-time officers and “detail or assign such officers or employees to the United States Embassy or a United States Consulate in Mexico.”

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