Amid resounding applause from the European parliament, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen recently announced the initiation of a subsidies investigation into China’s unfair trade practices in the electric vehicle sector.

This was a bold move in light of possible retribution against European car and other companies operating in China. Recalling how Chinese unfair and predatory practices led to the demise of the European solar industry, von der Leyen stressed the urgency for Europe to pre-empt a similar fate in the auto sector.

The EU’s move will hopefully lead US policymakers to evaluate their own policy tools and develop a proactive response.

Over the past decade, the Chinese EV industry has benefited from massive state subsidies and other government support. This paved the way for the country to become the largest global vehicle exporter this year, surpassing Germany and Japan. “New energy vehicles and equipment” was one of the 10 technology sectors targeted for global leadership in Beijing’s Made in China 2025 policy.

Moreover, China has strategically secured critical mineral deposits around the world needed for battery production, such as lithium. That means for several years Beijing has been able to dictate that EVs use Chinese-made batteries, which account for up to 60 per cent of the value of a car. While China has the world’s largest domestic automotive market at some 26mn vehicles, its EV companies are producing way more than the domestic market can consume — an excess of as much as 10mn a year, according to some estimates.

In many respects, the EV playbook looks similar to those followed by Beijing in developing its solar, steel and aluminium sectors. In those industries, massive subsidies led to overproduction and excess supply, saturating global markets and crippling international competitors. The oversupply of EVs has already found its way to Europe and many other corners of the world.

So far, the US has been spared an influx of Chinese cars due to a number of factors. First, the American tariff of 27.5 per cent (a 2.5 per cent toll on all auto imports plus the 25 per cent China import-specific one) is relatively high. Second, Chinese vehicles are ineligible for consumer EV tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, disadvantaging them in the US market. Third, geopolitical tensions are likely to have steered Chinese auto manufacturers away from the American market.

But there is no guarantee that this situation will continue, particularly as Chinese companies face rising pressure to offload their excess production. As a result, it’s in the US interest to act early.

The Biden administration has a number of tools at hand to do this. Like Europe, it can initiate a subsidies investigation bodog casino under the US countervailing duty law, and even couple it with an antidumping probe if it can show that Chinese car companies are charging unfairly low prices. The challenge here would be demonstrating — as required by statute — that the domestic industry was injured by imports from China when the volume of Chinese cars imported so far has been negligible.

An alternative could be a new investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act focused exclusively on Chinese unfair practices in the automotive and battery sectors, but this would take time. The administration could also consider initiating cases on national security grounds or over safeguards, but such remedies would not be China-specific and could result in contentious disputes with allies and partners.

Rather than begin lengthy trade investigations, the Biden administration has another mechanism at its disposal. It could adjust the vehicle levy as part of the trade representative’s ongoing, mandated Section 301 review of the wider China tariffs imposed by former president Donald Trump.

This review, which is due to be completed by the end of the year, could enable the US to raise the 27.5 per cent duty to a level that would, with more certainty, shield the American market from an onslaught of Chinese EVs.

Importantly, this could be done as part of an overall rebalancing of the tariffs, paving the way for the US to reduce tariffs on other consumer and industrial goods that are hurting America’s interests more than China’s.

Trade representative Katherine Tai has repeatedly said the US needs to use its trade tools in a strategic manner. This is the perfect opportunity to put this policy objective into practice.

The writer is vice-president of the Asia Society Policy Institute

To read the full opinion, click here.

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The region at the heart of solar production is rife with forced labor and it is not clear that there is a meaningful supply anywhere else of the materials the solar industry relies on. Further, it is not clear how solar suppliers, importers, developers, or investors can verify that their supply chains are free of forced labor when the Chinese government denies that such practices exist and may punish those who would contradict that position.

Add to that issue the fact that Customs is stopping equipment at the border if the agency suspects there is forced labor in the supply chain, but the U.S. Government has not provided meaningful guidance on how to prove that solar products are free of forced labor and therefor admissible.

The industry and regulators are searching for a viable way to source clean supply chains for clean energy and to verify with some certainty that solar equipment in the United States if free of forced labor.

1. Background

Hoshine Silica Industry Co. is a major supplier to the solar industry and is more or less ground zero for forced labor abuses.  The solar industry relies on panels made from silicon. Hoshine is the world’s largest metallurgical-grade silicon producer.

Silicon can be made a number of ways, but the most common steps are to mine quartz, crush and heat that material into metallurgic-grade silicon, then use chemical processing to make polycrystalline silicon. There is obviously more complexity to the system, but the purpose of the explanation above is to point out that a major source for the silica rock, as well as the coal needed for the heat processing, are both found in the mines and manufacturing bodog sportsbook review facilities of Hoshine Silica Industry co. According to reports, those facilities are in the same industrial park as two Uighur internment camps.

The solar industry recognizes the forced labor problem is real, is not going to go away on its own, and must be addressed head on.

2. The Current and Near Future State of Regulation

2.1 U.S. Customs is stopping equipment at the border

As we reported here, the U.S. Government issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) stating that any products believed to contain silica material produced by Hoshine Silicon Industry Co. and its subsidiaries should be held by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and not released without evidence that the product’s supply chain was free of forced labor.

It appears that more similar regulation is coming down the pike. We understand that the effort to combat forced labor in the solar industry is being driven by the National Security Council at the White House, and supported by an unusual coalition of China hawks, Labor interests, and NGOs. For that we reason, we believe that there the current administration will pursue more WROs.

Additionally, on June 24, the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added four Chinese entities to the Entity List for accepting or utilizing forced labor in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression against Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). It is very possible those companies may soon be subject to WROs:

• Xinjiang Daqo New Energy Co., Ltd.
• Xinjiang East Hope Nonferrous Metals Co., Ltd.
• Xinjiang GCL New Energy Material Technology Co., Ltd.
• Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC)

According to recent reports, BIS may also issue more entity list designations. Those designations prohibit exports to the designated companies. However, they may be a good indicator of what companies may be targeted for WROs thereafter.

2.2 The U.S. Congress may broaden prohibitions on imports

In parallel, the House and Senate are currently working on two bills, both titled Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The senate bill has been passed, while the House bill is still in committee. Those bills could establish a presumption that anything produced in the XUAR uses forced labor. That would mean that importers of those articles would then be reqiured rebut that presumption in order to import any goods from the Region into the United States.

2.3 Other agencies may add to the restrictions

There is some speculation that the USTR may start issuing 301 designations – adding a substantial punitive tariff to equipment from the Xinjiang region. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Treasury has shown that it is not afraid to use its sanctions authority to entirely cut off U.S. persons from transactions with parties suspected of forced labor abuses.

3. The Opening for Industry: Self-Regulation or Government Regulation

3.1 Customs will need some time to ramp up its enforcement apparatus

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents addressing forced labor are competent and hard-working. However, the agency is understaffed to deal with the overwhelming problem of forced labor in the solar industry. With maybe a couple dozen agents assigned to forced labor, and that force also looking at Xinjiang textile and agriculture imports, it will be difficult for CBP to find bandwidth to clear imports stopped at the border for forced labor issues.

That small group of enforcement officials will face the challenge of tracing supply chains from the base chemical bodog casino level described above, with documentation in Mandarin. Finally, at this point, there is no clear guidance from the U.S. government as to what evidence would clear a shipment stopped at the border. There is no U.S. Customs checklist for forced labor verification nor a list of acceptable evidence that a supply chain is free of forced labor.

Because no guidance on what constitutes admissible product has been issued, it is unclear what CBP would want to see in order to clear equipment held under a WRO. This uncertainty leaves industry with an opportunity to lead before government imposes requirements (more in Section 5 below).

3.2 Industry can have a voice (for now) in what regulation will look like

As the U.S. Government slowly starts to work on figuring out what constitutes admissibility, the Solar Industry has opportunity to lead the process in a number of different ways:

• The Solar Industry could create and propose a list of criteria for admissible products.
• While it is taking steps to identify suppliers accepting or relying on forced labor (on which more in our second article of this series), the Industry could effectively clear a group of suppliers and white-list those in cooperation with the U.S. Government.
• The Industry could take the Better Cotton Initiative as a template and invest in a third-party verification system that would constitute substantive, auditable evidence of a supply chain free of forced labor.
• We understand that chemical signatures in the silicon wafer from the silicon rock processing would allow for batch tracing,[1] which allowing the Industry or a vendor to the industry to batch-test and identify the source of the materials rely on.

Any one or a combination of the above approaches could help the Industry support the laudable goal of eliminating forced labor from the supply chain while, at the same time, helping the Industry avoid onerous or inconsistent regulations devised without its input. There is opportunity for solar to continue its spectacular growth, but it will need to take steps to address this messy problem.

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The European Union is a global leader in climate policy. It has made considerable progress in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, whether measured per capita, per unit of GDP, or by its use of renewable energy. It is raising its decarbonization targets under its Green Deal and in the run up to the Conference of the Bodog Poker Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow in November. The EU’s climate plans include a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), outlined in a leaked preliminary draft and due to be formally proposed in July. This would be essentially a tax on imports designed to offset the (notional) difference in carbon price between the EU and its trading partners high emission traded sectors such as steel and aluminum. The EU is under pressure to provide compensation to high emitters who pay higher prices for carbon permits under its emission trading system (ETS). Meanwhile, the CBAM is supported by many in civil society as an effort likely to encourage countries to adopt more ambitious emission reduction measures.

To read the full report from the Policy Center for the New South, please click here.

Uri Dadush is a Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, previously known as OCP Policy Center in Rabat, Morocco and a non-resident scholar at Bruegel. 

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Making sure this situation does not worsen – and in fact improves – depends on many factors. One has to do with the capacity of a country to produce food at home and import it from abroad. This is where trade comes in, and its role is not minor. The value of food imports has tripled since the beginning of the century,  and today about 80% of the world’s population is fed in part by imports.

Chart: An alarming price trend for food security around the world

Exports at the expense of staple foods

The expansion of global trade has helped to, at least in part, move food from where it can be produced to where it is needed.  But this has also come with downsides. Many developing countries have increased their specialization in export crops at the expense of staple foods for domestic consumption, making them net food importers with the vulnerabilities this implies.

In Africa, a continent with severe food insecurity challenges, most food comes from abroad. Between 2016-2018 about 85% of food was imported from outside the continent. And as its population grows, net food imports to Africa are expected to triple by 2025 even as undernourishment grows by one-third.

In the Caribbean, food imports as a proportion of merchandise exports skyrocketed from 5% in 1995 to 32% in 2019. And overall, only four out of 12 developing regions show a positive net balance in basic food trade.

This excessive exposure to global markets, and reliance on foreign supply, increases risks and price volatility, which in turn compromises food security in many countries, with the stark human consequences it entails. The trade community cannot be oblivious to this and must act fast – and there is a way.

A fair agriculture trading system

In 1995 an agreement on agriculture was reached under World Trade Organization (WTO). It aimed at establishing “a fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system” under the multilateral trade rules and disciplines (the preamble of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture).

While the agreement was a major multilateral achievement, the incomplete implementation of it and the lack of use of provisions for special and differential treatment have limited the ability of some developing countries to deal with food security concerns.

It is true that the agreement embeds an asymmetric use of trade-distorting subsides. The amount of trade-distorting support allowed by a country was determined based on the 1986-1988 levels, when 95% of subsides came from developed countries. This gives a higher baseline to richer nations.  Nevertheless, developing countries are allowed a higher de minimis of domestic support (10%) than developed countries (5%). In addition, developing countries can use investment and agricultural inputs subsidies to low-income producers. They can also rely on public stockholding, domestic aid for goods and income insurance programmes.

Many of these provisions, or opportunities to increase domestic food production, have not been used for two main reasons. First, because some of the clauses in the agreement were considered not strictly enforceable. Second, most developing countries lack the fiscal capacity to effectively use such provisions.

The need for global cooperation

Conflict and war, weather extremes and economic shocks, including those induced by COVID-19, are primary drivers of insecurity. Trade policy will not be enough to cover such a wide front, but it can help to improve food security. And it needs to do so urgently.

This requires cooperation and a firm commitment from WTO members to finally remove the limitations and asymmetries of the agreement on agriculture.

This implies the following:

• Banning export restrictions on essential foodstuffs for food deficit countries, and on food aid to countries in emergency situations
• Enhancing the support to resource poor agricultural producers by modifying article 6.2 and updating the de minimis limit and facilitate support to vulnerable producers, including women
• Finding a permanent solution to public stockholding for food security purposes, an issue that has been pending at the WTO since 2013
• Increase financial and technical support to foster agricultural productivity in developing countries in order to address food security, especially in least developed countries and net-food importing developing countries

Delaying the implementation of measures to increase food production in food insecure countries goes beyond delaying an agreement. It denies millions of people of a fundamental human right.

An empty negotiation table in Geneva means empty dinner tables around the world, with millions of men, women and children living with the agonizing feeling of an empty stomach. This is why we cannot wait. 2021 must be the year when the right to food is finally embedded in the global trade architecture. The upcoming ministerial conferences of the WTO (MC12) and UNCTAD (UNCTAD15) are opportunities the global community simply cannot miss.  

To read the full commentary, please click here.

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A new, untested regulatory mechanism for the promotion of (more) sustainable trade through trade preferences is about to be introduced for the first time worldwide. By a relatively narrow margin, Switzerland ratified the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between EFTA states (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland) and Indonesia on 7 March 2021, in a popular referendum. While it is limited to trade in palm oil and its derivatives, the new regulatory mechanism has the potential for overcoming most of the shortfalls in existing “Trade and Sustainable Development” (TSD) chapters, for instance, in EU trade agreements: it is binding, enforceable, and thereby creates a tangible economic incentive to switch from conventional to sustainable production. It may, however, also create new legal pitfalls: 1) dependency on private standards or labels, 2) reliance on private certification processes, and 3) uncertainty with regard to the long-term impact of a given standard or label.

Legal basics of trade preferences for sustainable production

To date, WTO law considers differential treatment between products or services based on non-product-related process and production methods (npr-PPMs; process and production methods which do not result in a different product, e.g. organic versus conventionally produced cotton) discriminatory. As a result, unilateral policy measures with extra-territorial application and differentiation between “sustainable” and “conventional” production are in principle in violation of WTO obligations.

While npr-PPMs can still be implemented on a national basis – for instance through minimum wages, the enforcement of labour standards, or national emission ‘cap and trade’ systems – such trade-related interests normally cannot be applied to imports. Hence, unless a substantial number of WTO Members participates in similar policies, applying such policies nationally may put the domestic industry at a disadvantage compared with their foreign competitors. WTO members are thereby disincentivised in raising their national minimum standards in environmental, climate and labour protection.

In very rare circumstances, unilateral extra-territorial application of a specific npr-PPM might actually qualify as “necessary to protect public morals” or “relating to the conservation of exhaustible natural resources” within the general exceptions in the main WTO treaties (e.g. Article XX GATT; Article XIV GATS). Safer and more direct, however, are trade preferences for sustainable production in bilateral or regional trade agreements as long as the minimum requirements for trade agreements are fulfilled (Article XXIV GATT; Article V GATS). In theory, WTO Members may agree on any kind of sustainability preferences they wish. As Bronckers & Gruni and many others show, however, WTO members have to date done so rarely, if at all: up until today, TSD chapters are for the most part limited to the adoption and/or implementation of international core environment, climate and labour treaties, and non-compliance remains non-sanctionable. 

A new regulatory mechanism: accelerating the transition from conventional to sustainable production through preferential trade liberalization

This is where CEPA might turn out to be a game-changer. CEPA is the first trade agreement which encompasses a regulatory distinction between conventional and sustainable production. The TSD chapter requires “all vegetable oils and their derivatives traded between the parties” to be traded in accordance with the “laws, policies and practices aiming at protecting primary forests, peatlands, and related ecosystems, halting deforestation, peat drainage and fire clearing in land preparation, reducing air and water pollution, and respecting rights of local and indigenous communities and workers” (Articles 8.10(2):a and 8.10(2):e). 

While this provision is excluded from the scope of CEPA dispute settlement, along with the rest of the TSD chapter, it is nevertheless likely to be rigorously enforced. Instead of burdening Indonesia with the enforcement of CEPA Article 8.10, importing CEPA parties (i.e. the EFTA-states) will establish domestic control-systems to ensure that only palm oil and its derivatives produced in line with Article 8.10 benefits from CEPA preferential treatment. In Switzerland, this means that importers of Indonesian palm oil and palm oil derivatives have to prove RSPO-certification (international sustainability standard established by the “Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil”), if they want to benefit from CEPA tariff-reductions. The domestic processes of import control and governance in Switzerland are established in a separate ordinance, de facto moving responsibility for enforcement to Swiss authorities. Therewith, CEPA creates an enforceable, tangible economic incentive to switch from conventional to sustainable production, while avoiding bilateral trade conflicts by limiting enforcement to import control and governance of domestic importers.

While preferential treatment of sustainable production is limited to palm oil in CEPA, its regulatory mechanism could in principle be applied also to other products and commodities in future trade agreements. The mechanism hinges upon a suitable international standard or label. If such a standard or label is available and both sides agree, the same type of domestic import control and governance could be extended to any kind of trade preference (e.g. organic beef, fair trade bananas, climate neutral clothes, etc.).

The curious case of Indonesian palm oil in CEPA

In the case of Indonesian palm oil, circumstances are quite unique. According to the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, almost all palm oil and palm oil derivatives imported to Switzerland are: 1) already certified (due to consumer preferences), and 2) originate in Malaysia. Preferential treatment of RSPO-certified Indonesian palm oil is therefore unlikely to change the overall share of certified palm oil imported to Switzerland, but may perhaps lead to a shift from Malaysian to Indonesian origin. This may be the reason why Indonesia was prepared to agree to the CEPA regulatory mechanism for certified palm oil in the first place – Indonesia gains a competitive advantage vis-à-vis their main Malaysian competitor.

Finally, since only a small share of Indonesian palm oil is currently RSPO-certified, it is possible that – contrary to what is intended – deforestation will increase at first as a consequence of the CEPA regulatory mechanism: evidence suggests that prior to RSPO-certification existing palm oil plantations will expand. In addition, RSPO-certification is known to reduce deforestation in primary forests and high tree cover areas, but has no impact on deforestation in lower tree cover areas. Ultimately, an increase in trade in palm oil and its derivatives is bound to have a negative impact on the environment even with RSPO-certification.

Will the CEPA approach catch on?

Social and environmental drawbacks of trade liberalisation are well-documented and widely acknowledged today: as it turns out, global trade and competition alone do not suffice to lessen inequality between and within states and to promote sustainable economic development. Already back in 2011, Dani Rodrik famously identified the drawbacks of economic globalization as the “Globalization Paradox” where he argued: “The reality is that we lack the domestic and global strategies needed to manage globalisation’s disruptions. As a result, we run the risk that the social [and environmental] costs of trade will outweigh the narrow economic gains and spark an even worse globalisation backlash”(at 88). Is the approach taken in CEPA one way to address this?

CEPA is the first trade agreement elevating a private sustainability standard to a binding requirement for preferential treatment. Furthermore, an otherwise non-sanctionable provision in the TSD chapter becomes enforceable through domestic legislation (and domestic courts). CEPA thus creates a template for binding, enforceable sustainability preferences in trade agreements – a regulatory precedent with the potential to become a new sustainability standard for TSD chapters in trade agreements.

Given that trade agreements will continue to be subject to the optional referendum and remain disputed in Switzerland, it is to be expected that from this point on at least every EFTA or Swiss trade agreement will need to encompass a similar provision in order to meet the threshold of securing the support of a majority of Swiss voters. The implications for on-going and future trade negotiations involving Switzerland are therefore considerable. Spill-over effects to other trade negotiations – notably involving the EU – are quite possible.

But there are also good reasons why other countries have to date been reluctant to introduce a comparable regulatory mechanism in their FTAs. First, it establishes heavy dependence on a particular (private) standard or “label” and on certification processes which are oftentimes not entirely transparent and fair. Unintended consequences cannot be excluded. Second, it is both patronising domestic consumers and foreign producers and thus also revives outdated and failed trade and development policies. Ultimately, it is not entirely certain that preferential treatment limited to certified products and commodities will necessarily benefit the environment, the people and the climate the way it is intended to. 

Nevertheless, if we want to address negative side-effects of international trade – such as pollution and environmental degradation, the exhaustion of natural resources, dangerous working conditions, along with a rise in inequality – we need to look beyond existing WTO law and TSD chapters in trade agreements. The CEPA provides a fresh way of thinking about the role of trade preferences in the protection of the environment, the climate and labour. 

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the original authors and contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of TradeExperettes, the TradeExperettes editorial team and/or any or all contributors to this site.

To read the full blog post by Trade Experettes, please click here. 

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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.

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.

To read the full report from the Atlantic Council, please click here

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The U.S. and China are engaged in a strategic competition that will determine the shape of global politics this century. But when it comes to trade, a critical dimension of that competition, America is ceding the field.

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There will be no lack of eagerness to wipe out Trump’s legacy, either in the United States or internationally. But an attempt merely to restore the pre-Trump status quo would fail to address major challenges, some of which contributed to Trump’s election in 2016. As Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute has pointed out, the task ahead is one of rebuilding, rather than repair. It should start with a clear identification of the problems that the international system must tackle.

The first priority should be to move toward a commons-oriented system. The preservation of global public goods such as a stable climate or biodiversity was understandably ignored by the architects of the post-war international economic order, and (less understandably) was still a secondary priority in the system’s post-Cold War partial renewal. Policymakers focused on visible linkages through trade and capital flows, rather than on the invisible ties that bind us to a common destiny, which helps to explain why the rules and institutions governing the latter are still much weaker.

Biden’s intention to re-join unconditionally the 2015 Paris climate agreement is to be welcomed, but it will not by itself turn the accord into an ambitious, enforceable program. The large number of players and the strong temptation to let others shoulder the burden make preserving the global commons notoriously hard. Even in the area of health, solutions to date do not measure up to the challenge.

Climate action is critical. Without an elusive global consensus, efforts will have to rely on a coalition whose members converge on hard targets and on border-adjustment mechanisms applicable to trade with third countries. Implementation will be fraught with difficulties. Success will require agreeing on which trade measures are acceptable and which are just covert protectionism. That is a high bar to reach. Having already indicated its intention to introduce a border adjustment, the European Union is on the front line here. This is a major responsibility.

The second priority is to make the global economic system as rivalry-proof as possible. Regardless of who wins the US presidential election on November 3, great-power competition between the US and China will continue to dominate international relations. But the Cold War analogy is misleading, because today’s protagonists are major economic partners. Whereas the Soviet Union’s share of US imports never exceeded a fraction of a percentage point, China currently accounts for 18%. Die-hard US advocates of decoupling wrongly picture further Chinese development as a national security threat and want to end this interdependence in an attempt to stop China’s growth. However, as the Peterson Institute’s Nicholas Lardy has argued, a general decoupling from China would be a “high-cost, low-benefit policy.”

The question is then how to recognise the reality of geopolitical tensions while containing their impact on global economic relations. The relevant comparison is not with the Cold War but with the pre-1914 rivalry between Britain and Germany in the context of the first major period of globalisation. Contemporary claims that economic ties made war unthinkable were proved wrong. But as long as states refrain from fighting a real war, a strong multilateral regime can help repress their temptation to wage it through other means.

Europe is the biggest of all bystanders. It risks suffering collateral damage from the fight between the two global giants, both of which have started bullying it. But the EU is not toothless. It should stand up for the rules-based international economic order and lead the fight against its weaponisation. As the European Council on Foreign Relations argued in a recent report, the bloc should start by equipping itself against economic coercion.

The third priority is to make the global economic system more protective of workers and citizens. Already prevailing doubts about globalisation have grown as a result of the US-China trade conflict, rising inequality, and the realisation that in a situation of acute stress such as the pandemic, advanced economies could struggle to procure simple equipment. Citizens and workers want an economic system that better protects them. Governments have taken note and want to show that they care. The question is how.

The primary response should be domestic: from education and training to place-based revitalisation and redistribution, there is much that governments can do, but neglected in the heyday of free-market globalisation. Now is the time for new policies.

But experience has shown that few national governments can carve out a complete response without a supportive global environment. Individual countries cannot curb global corporate tax avoidance and aggressive regulatory competition by themselves. Policymakers globally should acknowledge that the sustainability of economic openness depends on whether its benefits are distributed in a fair way. And as Harvard’s Dani Rodrik has long argued, the global system should both promote openness and allow room for national adaptation.

Each of the three goals – taking care of global public goods, containing the weaponisation of economic relations, and making the system fairer – is challenging. Combining all of them will be daunting. Never in history were rival power centres compelled to cooperate in addressing common threats of a comparable magnitude. It is not hard to imagine how policymakers might use the commendable goals of avoiding carbon leakage or buttressing what Europe now calls ‘strategic autonomy’ as pretexts for outright protectionism. Moreover, how will the world avoid a global economic breakup if China is simultaneously seen as a national-security threat, a reckless polluter, and a destroyer of social rights? Such challenges will severely test leaders in the years ahead.

Jean Pisani-Ferry holds the Tommaso Padoa Schioppa chair of the European University Institute in Florence and is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, the European think tank.

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