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Ryan Murphy — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 16:03:11 +0000

Perhaps surprisingly, little is known about the capacities of different countries to produce vaccines. Official data on global production volumes is not available and trade data only gives an incomplete picture of production capacity. The United States and China, for instance, import and export low levels of vaccines relative to their population sizes, suggesting that major parts of vaccine production are not reflected in trade data.

To understand how COVID-19 has affected global trade in, and production of, vaccines, and to get a sense of where the main capacities to produce COVID-19 vaccines at scale might be found, we looked at global vaccine trade prior to the pandemic and estimated production worldwide, with two main results. First, pre-pandemic, the EU was the world’s largest producer of vaccines. Second, the pre-pandemic market for vaccine was divided into two spheres: rich countries are supplied by EU and US production capacity (with the latter mostly producing for itself), while India was the main producer for developing countries. China produced almost exclusively for its own market.

Evidence since the start of the pandemic indicates that, while broadly COVID-19 has not changed these production patterns, there have been modifications. China has become a major supplier of COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries, using its vaccines as political leverage and benefitting from the fact that the US has yet to export its production, while India has stated explicitly that it will prioritise its own population. In this context, with its substantial production capacity, the EU will play a major role as a global COVID-19 vaccine supplier as the world continues to tackle the pandemic.

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Figure 1 shows the biggest vaccine exporters pre-pandemic (2017-2019). The EU27 as a bloc (ignoring intra-EU trade) was by far the largest exporter of vaccines to the world, both in terms of volumes (44% of total global exports) and value (60.3%). The larger share of value compared to volume indicates that the EU exported relatively more to markets where it could supply at higher prices, ie high-income countries (HICs). Figure 2 shows this: while the EU supplied 60% of the vaccines imported by HICs, it only supplied 12% of the vaccines imported by low-income countries (LICs). The US and the United Kingdom were the major revenue markets for the EU’s vaccines exports, representing 43.4% and 16.7% respectively of total EU revenues from export of vaccines. Taken together, LICs provided only 1.2% of EU revenues from vaccine exports (7.4% from lower-middle income countries, so 8.6% for LICs and lower-middle income countries), but absorbed 3.9% of volumes exported from the EU (33.2% for lower-middle income countries).

With a share of 22%, the US was the second largest exporter in value terms (though only one third of the EU size). But like the EU, the US pre-pandemic mostly exported to other HICs: it represented only 2% of volumes imported by LICs (Figure 2). For India, the opposite was the case. While India was the second-largest vaccine exporter in terms of volumes (24.7% of total global exports) it represented barely more than 2% of vaccines exports in terms of value. This huge discrepancy is linked to the fact that India exported virtually only to LICs, representing 80% of their vaccine imports by volume (Figure 2).

These trade patterns reflect a highly segmented market for vaccines, with HICs representing the bulk of revenues, while LICs represent the bulk of volumes. High-income producers (EU, US) sell vaccines to high-income countries, while India provides vaccines to low-income countries. This notable market segmentation is associated with the licensing practices of the pharmaceutical industry.

The largest life sciences companies by vaccine revenues are: GSK, Merck, Sanofi and Pfizer, which represent about 90% of global vaccine revenues. They license their patents to producers in LICs to produce and sell to LICs, reserving HIC markets for their own production or dedicated HIC licensees. In particular, the Serum Institute of India plays an outsized role as a licensee, supplying vaccines to low-income countries.

Estimating vaccine production capacities

To get a full picture of global vaccines supply patterns before the pandemic, we looked not only at the trade flows, but also at production capacities. In the absence of official data on global vaccine production, we estimated countries’ production volumes from the available trade data. For this, we first estimated internal demand. We looked at countries that are not producers (ie countries that export virtually no vaccines). For these countries, we assumed that their total demand for vaccines is equal to their imports. This gives a sense of what the ‘consumption’-based demand for vaccines is. Based on this approach, we provide a range of estimates. We computed the average imports per capita of non-producing countries and used this to compute demand for all countries. We also looked at the relationship between imports per capita and a ‘vaccine index’ based on the demographics and immunisation rates in the same non-producing countries. We computed estimates both with and without income-level segmentation by country. We then derived production estimates per country as the sum of our estimates of their demand and their net exports.

All estimates produce similar results and give a good sense of the scale of production volumes across the world. Table 1 sets out our estimated production volumes per country. Taken as a whole, the EU is the world’s largest producer of vaccines, closely followed by India, with estimates of around 15.5 million and 14.5 million kilogrammes of vaccines produced yearly, respectively. China with production in the realm of 8 million to 12 million kilogrammes comes in third place. The United States is in fourth place, but with considerably smaller production volumes of 4.5-5.2 million kilogrammes. Other countries with considerable vaccine production capacity are Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Russia. No African or Latin American country has an estimated production capacity of more than 1 million kilogrammes.

Among vaccine producers, the EU pre-pandemic exported the greatest (estimated) volumes of the vaccines it produced, apart from South Korea, which also has a high export-intensity, but from only a small (estimated) production capacity. China, meanwhile, exported almost no vaccines before COVID-19.

Table 1: Range of estimates of yearly vaccine production (millions of kg, 2017-2019 data)

COVID-19 and the future of vaccine production

While it is tempting to draw conclusions from these numbers about the capacity to produce COVID-19 vaccines, there are couple of caveats. First, our data reflects production capacity in ‘normal’ times (2017 to 2019 averages) and for a broad spectrum of vaccines. It is unclear to what extent new capacity has been installed or how much this capacity has been adapted to produce COVID-19 vaccines at the required scale and speed. More importantly, vaccines pre-pandemic were produced with different technologies.

The leading western producers mostly produce vaccines using viral vector and/or protein technology. Older inactivated virus technology is mostly used in LIC production, most notably in China. For COVID-19, the two Chinese vaccines approved by the World Health Organisation use inactivated virus technology, while vaccines from Astra Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson use viral vector technology (this includes the Serum Institute, which licenses Astra Zeneca vaccines for supply to LICs). However, the vaccines from BioNTech and Moderna use a novel mRNA technology. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was unclear how much of the established vaccine production capacity could be quickly activated for COVID-19 vaccine production, particularly for the novel mRNA vaccines.

Data on COVID-19 vaccine production from Airfinity, a small private firm that specialises in COVID-19 data, shows the similarities and differences compared to the pre-pandemic situation (Figure 3). The biggest producers of COVID-19 vaccines are the same as the biggest vaccine producers before the pandemic (China, the US, the EU and India), but the ranking has changed.

A significant change can be observed in China’s vaccine policy. While China exported hardly any vaccines before the pandemic, it is now the largest exporter of COVID-19 vaccines. Chinese vaccines are mainly exported to a handful of LICs in central and South-East Asia, South America and North Africa. The US, meanwhile, is yet to export any COVID-19 vaccine, as it has prioritised vaccinating its own population first. India, which pre-pandemic was the main exporter of vaccines to LICs and could be a pivotal country for meeting LIC demand, is exporting but redirecting its capacity in order to meet local demand. Russia’s Sputnik V viral vector vaccine has received a lot of media attention, but Russia, although it is exporting more than usual, only plays a minor role in volume terms.

Figure 3: Production and exports of COVID-19 vaccines

Overall, the evidence shows that high-income vaccine producers (US, EU) have, in the pandemic, continued to produce for high-income countries (though the US currently produces only for itself). In the light of our data, it is unsurprising that keeping global vaccine markets open was less of a priority for the US than the EU, given the much greater pre-pandemic export intensity of EU vaccine production.

However, for LICs, India’s apparent big step back during the pandemic from its role of exporter could be bad news. Until now, India has been the major supplier to LICs. Interestingly, China (and Russia, to a smaller degree) has seized the opportunity to increase production and exports to LICs.

Outlook

The pressing question currently is how to increase the volume of COVID-19 vaccines available to the world and, more specifically, to low-income countries. The developing world until now has relied on India for vaccines. Can other suppliers and countries scale up in the face of India’s retrenchment in the face of the devastating COVID-19 wave in India in spring 2021? China has significantly increased its capacity and now exports massively to low-income countries, but will be constrained by the willingness of countries to take up China’s vaccines, which use the older inactivated virus technology. Even if the US changes policy and exports more of its unused capacity, this capacity is not so sizeable.

While much hope has been invested in patent waivers to increase production in LICs, it is unclear if such a policy will work in the short term, given how little experience producers have with mRNA vaccines (making even voluntary licensing deals difficult). Even for vaccines based on the old inactivated vaccine or viral vector technologies, further transfers of production know-how are needed.

This leaves the EU as the main supplier to the world, given its capacity to produce at scale the most sought-after COVID-19 vaccines. In addition, EU producers have a legacy of exporting, though mainly intra-EU or to other HICs. In the medium-term, partnerships with emerging markets will remain absolutely essential. Notable is the EU’s initiative to support the creation of vaccine production in Africa, including through mRNA manufacturing. In addition, since developing markets are not served by European manufacturers in the first place, there is little risk of harming EU industry.

Lionel Guetta-Jeanrenaud is working at Bruegel as a Research Assistant. He studied economics at the Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, in France. Before joining Bruegel, Lionel worked as a research assistant at the Department of Economics of Harvard University.

Niclas Poitiers, a German citizen, joined Bruegel as a research fellow in September 2019. Niclas’ research interests include international trade, international macroeconomics and the digital economy. He is working on topics on e-commerce in trade as well as European trade policy in global trade wars. Furthermore he is interested in topics on income inequality and welfare state policies.

Prof Dr. Reinhilde Veugelers is a full professor at KULeuven (BE) at the Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation. She is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel since 2009. She is also a CEPR Research Fellow, a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and of the Academia Europeana. From 2004-2008, she was on academic leave, as advisor at the European Commission (BEPA Bureau of European Policy Analysis). She served on the ERC Scientific Council from 2012-2018 and on the RISE Expert Group advising the commissioner for Research. She is a member of VARIO, the expert group advising the Flemish minister for Innovation. She is currently a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of the journal Science and a co-PI on the Science of Science Funding Initiative at NBER.

To read the full commentary from Bruegel, please click here.

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Ryan Murphy — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 14:38:20 +0000

Just a few months after India confidently promised to send homegrown COVID-19 vaccines to billions of suffering people around the world, local production sputtered and a new wave of disease spread across the country. Indian vaccine makers were forced to keep their limited supplies at home, prompting them to try to shift the blame away from themselves. The most obvious target has been the United States, which the CEO of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, accused of imposing an “embargo” on vital ingredients needed to make the vaccine.

That would be a scandal if it were true. But it is not. Access to new, firm-level supply-chain data reveals there has never been a US export “embargo” on materials needed to manufacture vaccines. In recent months, in fact, the Serum Institute and other Indian companies have significantly increased imports of vaccine materials from key suppliers in the United States, including Merck Millipore, Thermo Fisher, Cytiva, Pall, ABEC, Sartorius, and more.

On April 16, Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute, brought things to a head with a tweet. “Respected @POTUS, if we are to truly unite in beating this virus, on behalf of the vaccine industry outside the U.S., I humbly request you to lift the embargo of raw material exports out of the U.S. so that vaccine production can ramp up.” He was not alone in accusing the US government of using the Defense Production Act (DPA) to ban exports of supplies. Mahima Datla, the CEO of Biological E, another major Indian vaccine company, made similar public complaints. President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, responded that the United States would help by immediately sending emergency vaccine-making equipment to India.

There is, of course, enough blame to go around. Vaccines have not been equitably distributed worldwide. Vaccine equipment and materials are in short supply globally, and shortages may even temporarily get worse. The White House was slow to explain that the Defense Production Act was not being used as “an export ban or a de facto ban or an embargo or any restrictions on sales to any other outside clients or customers anywhere. Companies are able to export however they need.”

But there is something to be learned from the misplaced accusations of CEOs, if policymakers can raise their sights and focus on helping India and other countries now struggling to expand their immediate vaccine production capabilities. Policymakers should work to provide more transparency into the vaccine manufacturing supply chain to avoid these sorts of misperceptions. More important, they should use that information to partner with companies globally to identify and mitigate the worst of the input shortages before the shortfalls stop or slow down vaccine production. The supply chain data presented here can help.

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The Serum Institute has licensed technology to manufacture two vaccines—one from AstraZeneca in June 2020 and one from Novavax in July. The company secured funding from Gavi and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in August and September to begin to scale up manufacturing that was at risk—i.e., before regulatory approval of the vaccines. In exchange, the Serum Institute agreed to supply hundreds of millions of doses to poor countries through the COVAX Facility over 2020 and 2021.

Manufacturing a vaccine is complex but can be separated into two basic stages (figure 1). The first involves making the drug substance and then formulating it into drug product. This requires capital equipment such as bioreactors and filtration pumps but also a continuous supply of “single use” (disposable) materials such as bioreactor bags, filters, and tubing, as well as chemicals and cellular and other raw materials known as “consumables.” Once done, a second facility takes shipments of the drug product and uses its assembly lines to squirt liquid vaccine into millions of tiny vials, adding caps and labels, and then packaging them up for distribution.

To manufacture the Novavax vaccine, for example, the Serum Institute procured massive new pieces of capital equipment in September, buying six 4,000 liter bioreactors that ABEC indicated were the “largest in the industry by a factor of two.” ABEC would manufacture the bioreactors and customized, single-use bioreactor bags “in its US and Ireland facilities to meet Serum Institute’s accelerated schedule.” (Nevertheless, ABEC is currently reporting a 16-18 week lead time for new shipments of its bags.)

The Serum Institute may have also repurposed legacy equipment already on hand, including to manufacture the AstraZeneca vaccine—which it has called Covishield. In the face of Poonawalla’s plea for more equipment, on April 26 the White House announced emergency shipments of “[Merck] Millipore filters that would have been used to manufacture AstraZeneca vaccine that will be used to manufacture the Covishield AstraZeneca vaccine [sic] serum.”

Equipment is likely in short supply globally, but there is no evidence to suggest a US “embargo” on Merck Millipore, ABEC, or any other company sending vaccine supplies to the Serum Institute (figure 2). Using S&P Global Market Intelligence Panjiva’s (Panjiva) data, which is based on Indian customs transactions, the Serum Institute received $25 million of imports from the United States between October 2020 and March 2021. This volume made up 22 percent of the Serum Institute’s imports from the world and was more than 30 percent higher than the prior six months.

A number of American-based vaccine equipment suppliers made shipments to the Serum Institute between October and March. In October and December, those 4,000 liter bioreactors arrived, reflecting $4 million of purchases from ABEC. Merck Millipore also shipped $3.7 million of goods, including filters; Cytiva and Pall sent a combined $3.3 million of exports, including disposable bioreactor bags. Serum also imported $2.1 million from Thermo Fisher and $600,000 from Sartorius.

The Serum Institute was not alone. Biological E has been preparing to manufacture two other vaccines—one from Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) as well as one from Dynavax and the Baylor College of Medicine. While Indian regulators have not yet authorized either for use, Biological E has had a technology agreement for each since August 2020.

Biological E shows similar buying patterns from US suppliers (figure 3). Between October and March, the vaccine manufacturer received $9 million of imports from the United States, 29 percent of its total imports and an increase of 220 percent (from $2.9 million) from the prior six-month period. Thermo Fisher shipped $3.6 million of those goods, including bioreactor bags, and $187,000 of the exports, including filters, were from Merck Millipore.

The existence of these US exports does not mean, of course, that all of the equipment and materials were to be used to make COVID-19 vaccines. (The Serum Institute and Biological E also manufacture other vaccines.) It also does not imply that these Indian manufacturers are still not missing critical parts or that supplies are not running short. Equipment shortages have been a problem throughout the pandemic, even impacting American vaccine companies. At one point Pfizer, for example, had to recycle individual filters two or three times to avoid running out.

American suppliers of vaccine equipment agree. In a Bloomberg interview in January, Chris Ross, CEO of Merck Millipore, indicated the company had been hit with “off-the-charts” demand for filtration devices and the single-use equipment that their clients needed to make COVID-19 vaccines.

Vaccine Manufacturers Globally May All Be Relying on the Same Few Suppliers

There are many causes of the equipment and raw materials shortages. But things may have been made worse because of how the supply chains for some of these vaccine manufacturers developed, creating a demand spike for the same materials from the same few companies at the same time.

Take the AstraZeneca vaccine’s global manufacturing network. The first stage is now being done by at least nine different companies in eight different countries (figure 4). The second stage happens in at least ten different facilities in nine countries.

Pall and Cytiva, a pair of subsidiaries under Danaher, are likely supplying at least some equipment for the AstraZeneca vaccine supply chain network. Pall was part of the original consortium the Oxford vaccine originators convened in early April 2020 that later expanded to include the AstraZeneca partnership. Clive Glover, Pall’s director for cell and gene therapy, described the equipment implications (of figure 3) with, “The need to standardize was a necessity for this project because there are more than 20 different sites manufacturing [the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine], each using the 50 or so consumables required for the manufacturing process. If each site had its own customized version, there would need to be more than 1,000 parts!”

Standardizing the AstraZeneca production process would have tradeoffs. A benefit of common equipment and materials would be the speed at which each new facility could scale up production of a consistent drug product. But the downside of standardization is it may concentrate—and lock in—demand for equipment into a limited number of suppliers. That is, the benefit of that speed and drug product consistency can only be realized if there is enough of the standardized equipment to go around.

The Serum Institute may face intense competition for equipment from many other sites in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing network. Two US facilities—for Emergent BioSolutionsand Catalent—have had AstraZeneca production taking place under a DPA priority-rated contract since summer 2020, giving those plants earlier access to any US-based supplies that the Serum Institute might also need. This may explain how the US government was able to find Merck Millipore filters to share with the Serum Institute on April 26. Finally, demand for equipment to make the AstraZeneca vaccine was also likely coming from newly-tasked facilities in the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Japan, Argentina, and the two in the United Kingdom (see again figure 3).

A similar uptick in demand for common equipment likely affected the Serum Institute’s ability to scale up production for Novavax. Novavax has contracted at least seven other facilities to manufacture the drug product for its vaccine (figure 5). Two are in the United States, and at least one of them, FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies (FDB) in Texas, also appears to use equipment from Pall and Cytiva. The other Novavax facilities are in the United Kingdom (also a FDB plant), Czech Republic, Spain, Japan, and South Korea. In April, Novavax CEO Stanley Erck indicated some facilities were threatened by a global shortage of bioreactor bags, but he did not indicate which plants or which supplying companies were behind the shortfall. Finally, note that the Emergent BioSolutions plant also had the ABEC 4,000 literbioreactor in place prior to the pandemic. (Other COVID-19 vaccine efforts were reportedly also using ABEC equipment.) Thus, many facilities were likely competing with the Serum Institute for bags and other materials needed to make the Novavax vaccine.

The shortages were predictable, and under Operation Warp Speed, the US government at least attempted to address the problem. In October, it provided Cytiva $31 million to “expand manufacturing capacity in the company’s Massachusetts facilities and create duplicate capabilities in Cytiva’s Utah facilities to be complete in less than 12 months.” To help it scale up faster, Cytiva was also given priority access to input suppliers through an invocation of the Defense Production Act.

The US government subsidized Cytiva in part because it was “the primary supplier to many of the companies currently working with the U.S. government to develop COVID-19 vaccines” (emphasis added). But even if the subsidies to Cytiva were sufficient to expand the input capacity needed to satisfy American vaccine manufacturers, they were unlikely to have been large enough to satisfy the surge in global demand.

A New and Global COVID-19 Vaccine Supply Chain Policy is Needed

The challenge facing policymakers today is different from what it was six to twelve months ago. Then, US policymakers were focused on securing the American vaccine supply chain. At that point, which vaccines would receive regulatory approval remained unknown. Now, dozens of facilities making vaccines for Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca (figure 3), Novavax (figure 4), and more have all been established globally. Furthermore, as the Indian trade data confirmed, these facilities have already formed relationships with critical equipment and raw material suppliers around the world.

Today, policymakers need to leverage information about those relationships to identify and resolve potential input shortages before they stop or slow the much needed expansion of COVID-19 vaccine production. Here are five steps explaining how to do so (figure 6).

1. Regularly survey the dozens of now-established COVID-19 vaccine production facilities about their critical inputs.[5] How much do they need, from which companies, from where are those being supplied, and on what time schedule? Furthermore, how customized is each input? (Is it truly unique to that supplier?)

2. Once that information has been collected for each facility, aggregate it up to the level of the input supplier. Determine how many bioreactor bags are needed from Cytiva versus Thermo Fisher. Establish how many filters are needed from Merck Millipore, etc.

3. Separately survey the major input suppliers identified in step 2. Cross-check whether each input supplier’s pending orders match the information from the vaccine facilities. Check other competing claims on that input production (from clients making products aside from COVID-19 vaccines), and establish whether their existing capacity can satisfy orders from COVID-19 vaccine facilities on time. Can Merck Millipore really meet the simultaneous new demand for filters from Serum Institute, the Novavax plant in Texas, and the AstraZeneca facility in the Netherlands? Will Cytiva have enough bioreactor bags to service all of the plants in their order book? If a plant really needed more of this particular piece of equipment or raw material, would Thermo Fisher have any spare capacity to provide it?

4. Identify potential input shortages. Whenever step 3 reveals a supplier as not having sufficient capacity to meet all of the demand on time, some sort of policy intervention is needed.

5. Determine whether the shortage is impacting a customized input, and tailor the policy response accordingly.

For customized inputs that no other equipment supplier can make, there are two possibilities. Policy should first incentivize the company to utilize its existing capacity more intensively, in a wartime-like-effort, running second, third, and weekend shifts.

If that resulting increase in production of equipment and materials remains insufficient, incentivize the capital investment necessary for that company to expand productive capacity to provide more of those customized inputs.

Even with current heightened demand, an input supplier may not have the private incentive to invest in new capacity if it perceives that demand as transitory. For example, a private company may perceive facilities manufacturing pandemic-specific equipment, such as huge bioreactors or their enormous single-use bags, as having limited utility once the health crisis is over and tens of billions of vaccine doses are no longer a global regularity. Society needs companies to make this capacity investment right now to save lives, and governments may have to pay for it with subsidies. The evidence is that the industry is making large capital investments. But without the policy intervention, private firms might not make the rightexpansions into pandemic-level capacity to address the public health crisis.

For inputs that are not customized, use the step 3 information to help find temporary alternative suppliers. Take advantage of the information on spare capacity collected by having surveyed the other input providers.

Even following this checklist, sometimes there will be no immediate way to resolve an input shortage. In this case, policymakers can use the information they have collected on global production to help ration and nudge supplies to where they can do the most public good. Nevertheless, the pace of vaccine production will slow.

Making Operation Warp Speed Global

US policymakers have arguably deployed elements of this five-step process during the pandemic on behalf of American vaccine makers through Operation Warp Speed and the Defense Production Act. And when vaccine facilities in other countries have run into equipment shortages, the US government has sometimes even stepped in to help, as with the Serum Institute in April as well as with CureVac in May. But the Indian experience showcases why the United States cannot and should not attempt to manage this five-step process alone. The worldwide nature of the pandemic, as well as the international supply chains characterizing vaccine production and input-providers, means that the coordinated and informed allocation of scarce supplies must take place through a more global lens.

These are some of the now practical and real-world reasons why Bown and Bollyky (2021) have called for a COVID-19 Vaccine Investment and Trade Agreement (CVITA). Coordinating public investment to expand critical inputs and raw materials is required simply because those vaccine supplies may be produced in one country (such as the United States) even though they are desperately needed by a vaccine manufacturer in another (such as India). In the face of input shortages, policymakers may need to step in and make hard decisions about how to best allocate those supplies on behalf of public health. But the public also needs to see those policymakers as making informed decisions.

Transparency in the global vaccine supply chain will also improve trust. That may heighten cooperation and be a reminder that, in the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all in this together.

Chad P. Bown, Reginald Jones Senior Fellow since March 2018, joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics as a senior fellow in April 2016. His research examines international trade laws and institutions, trade negotiations, and trade disputes. With Soumaya Keynes, he cohosts Trade Talks, a weekly podcast on the economics of international trade policy.

Chris Rogers joined S&P Global as part of the acquisition of Panjiva in 2018. His research covers international trade policy, logistics sector trends and analysis of industrial supply chains. Previously he worked as an international trade analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence after spending nearly 20 years covering the global energy industry as a sell-side analyst at institutions including JPMorgan and UBS.

To read the full commentary from the Peterson Institute for International Political Economy (PIIE), please click here.

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Ryan Murphy — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 20:10:41 +0000

Relations between the major powers are at their worst for decades with cooperation thin on the ground, and COVID-19 having deepened suspicions further.

In April, the US Senate passed the Strategic Competition Act with bipartisan support, promising to ‘counter the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party globally’. In front of his American counterpart, China’s top foreign policy official denounced the effrontery of those who ‘smear’ Chinese democracy. Joe Biden calls Vladimir Putin ‘a killer’, while the Kremlin has put the US at the top of its list of unfriendly countries. Tension between China and India is high, the EU and UK are involved in repeated spats. Competition and mistrust are everywhere.

Far from producing greater collaboration in adversity, COVID-19 has exacerbated global rivalries. Given that the tensions long pre-dated the pandemic and are unlikely to improve any time soon, it is hard to see how the major powers can be persuaded to cooperate better to tackle this crisis. Coronavirus is just the first test. Other crises will follow.

President Biden calls the relationship with China ‘naturally competitive, sometimes adversarial and, on key issues, necessarily collaborative’. Managing these competing impulses is proving difficult to navigate. One route is the established one, focusing on international institutions and multilateral groups to tackle the big global challenges. In times of tension they have a restraining role; in times of cooperation, they can do so much more.

Yet, if the disappointing results of the G7 are anything to go by, expectations should be managed even lower than they are already. But there is another way. The present atmosphere of intense competition can actually be exploited to the advantage of developing economies.

The early hopes

A few weeks into the crisis, Ricardo Lagos, former president of Chile and a member of the Elders group of international leaders wrote: ‘Hopefully the international institutions will rise to the challenge of responding to this pandemic with the force that it demands, because this crisis will not be overcome by defeating the disease in any one country alone, but by guaranteeing an end to the affliction throughout the world.’

The first reaction of nation states was to protect their own, hoard, close borders – and indulge in nationalist points-scoring.

The more the US and its allies blamed China, both for the outbreak in Wuhan and for what many considered to be a cover-up, and the more China refused to provide the necessary access or information, the more distrustful and disjointed the global response became.

The final year of Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ presidency was characterized by a COVID-19 policy of denial, denigration of science and, at that point, the world’s highest infection rate. The president launched repeated broadsides against the World Health Organization (WHO), denouncing its Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus as a ‘puppet’ of China; he announced the termination of the US’s WHO membership and $400m annual payment, putting its finances in peril just at a time when the organization was most needed. Trump’s approach was borne partly of ideology, partly of a need to create a distraction from his administration’s incompetence.

The medical and health community rallied early, creating an initiative designed to distribute vaccines, even as they were still in the early stage of development. The aim of COVAX was to produce and make available two billion vaccines by the end of 2021. ‘No-one is safe until everyone is safe’ became the mantra of collaboration.

Solidarity was not the problem among the organizations – Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) worked with the WHO to get access to the COVID -19 Tools Accelerator, ACT-A, up and running.

COVAX was heralded as the ‘only truly global solution’, but it was a mix of ambition and acknowledgement of the limited commitment of the big powers to collaborate to vaccinate the world. Still, vaccinating ‘the priority fifth’ of the world’s population is better than nothing.

Vaccines and flags

From the start of the pandemic, in the provision of masks or personal protective equipment (PPE), nation states indulged their competitive instincts. Vaccine diplomacy and its alter ego vaccine nationalism followed this trend.

Public relations battles were fought out not just between rivals, but also among supposed allies. The British government juxtaposed its mass purchase of vaccines with the early failures of the European Union (EU) as vindication of Brexit. For its part, the EU’s definition of solidarity was largely confined to the bloc.

Chinese vaccines were present in, or pledged to, 90 countries. Each shipment carried national flags and were accompanied by photo-opportunities with grateful local dignitaries at the airport of arrival.

By the end of May, China had sold or donated 700 million doses worldwide. Chinese vaccines were present in, or pledged to, 90 countries. Each shipment carried national flags and were accompanied by photo-opportunities with grateful local dignitaries at the airport of arrival. The biggest deals were geographically and politically disparate – from Chile to Egypt, Mexico to the Philippines. Russia was in 80 countries. As Champa Patel, director of Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific programme, notes: ‘Russia and China are not new actors on these continents and are sometimes capitalising on long-established political or economic relationships.’

The key question is why China and Russia were faster. China’s heavily enforced early lockdowns kept numbers at home far lower than elsewhere in the world. In Russia, COVID-19 spread rapidly but much of the public was wary of accepting the home-produced vaccine, leading to one of the lowest take-up rates among industrialized nations. At least that freed up stocks to enable the Kremlin to go on a global charm offensive.

Two regions

By late May, Latin America had exceeded one million deaths, the highest for any region in the world. The region was long considered to be the United States’ backyard. Frustrated at the lack of vaccines, several leaders took to social media diplomacy to ‘vaccine shame’ their traditional ally.

In March, president of the Dominican Republic Luis Abinader tweeted: ‘President @JoeBiden, less-developed countries and traditional allies of the USA, like Dominican Republic, have approved the AstraZeneca vaccine and we need it urgently’ while Paraguay was struggling to get Chinese vaccines because of its recognition of Taiwan.

Latin America didn’t help itself. ‘The region has failed to coordinate through existing mechanisms or to act as a bloc,’ says Chris Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House. ‘Combined with the absence of the US, this has enabled others to fill the vacuum and split the region even more deeply.’

Shortly after delivering 400,000 doses to Bolivia, the Kremlin trumpeted access to its resources. ‘We are sure that Russian-Bolivian ties will expand, especially in sectors such as energy, mining and the peaceful use of nuclear technologies,’ Vladimir Putin said after meeting President Luis Arce. Bolivia has the world’s largest supply of lithium – an indispensable component in batteries for mobile phones – but has struggled to attract foreign investment to extract it.

Goodwill was thin on the ground in contract negotiations. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism alleged in February that Pfizer had insisted to several Latin American governments that they put up sovereign assets such as embassy buildings and military bases as collateral against the cost of potential future legal cases.

Africa has received two per cent of vaccines administered globally. The crisis was worsened by India’s decision to divert vaccines from the Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturing facility, which had been earmarked for export to deal with the country’s own COVID-19 emergency.

By May 2021, of 36 countries where death rates were rising, all but four were low- or middle-income countries. The cumulative effect has been to eradicate years of development, leading to a further division of wealth between nations and regions.

The African Union has set a goal of 40 per cent of vaccines to be produced on the continent within 20 years. Reforms such as these, vital though they are in the medium-term, will not alleviate the present crisis.

At first glance, the situation suggests a reversion back to the old paradigm of dependency. Yet there is another way of way of looking at Africa’s present predicament.

‘We are playing out the same thing again – but this time the politics are different,’ says Yates. This, he says, is reflected in the leadership of international agencies as three major UN institutions are now run by Africans. World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a former Nigerian government minister; UNAIDS’ Executive Director Winnie Byanyima was a Ugandan MP who then ran Oxfam International. The head of the WHO, Tedros, was an Ethiopian minister.

Alex Vines, director of the Africa Programme, notes a series of regional summits with Africa planned for 2022 (several of which had been postponed because of the pandemic), including the EU, China and Turkey. Everyone is piling into Africa – and Africa knows it. ‘The trend is towards multi-polarity,’ he says.

Discussion of big-power winners and losers may actually be missing the point. This narrative assumes that recipient countries have little or no agency and are unable to disaggregate the various motivations and decide for themselves. Therefore, it may not feel like that now, as populations reel, but developing economies have more agency, more influence, than before.

Do motives matter?

A recent Chinese White Paper on international development states: ‘China considers it a mission to contribute more to humanity. Its wish is to offer more public goods to the international community and join forces with other countries to build a better common future’. Humanitarian assistance merges with geo-strategic motives. Is that noticeably different to other countries’ international development policies?

COVID-19 has also given China an opportunity to portray itself as a responsible, science-based global leader, a ‘pharma power’, helping to shift the narrative from its role in the cause of the crisis. Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China, points to another motivation. ‘Ultimately so much of this comes down to economic self-interest. China is pursuing its vaccine diplomacy to help secure its many Belt and Road-related projects. The quicker those developing countries recover from the pandemic, the better it is for China’s own economic growth,’ she says.

Patel points to a failure of analysis among Western powers. ‘What will not work is trying to instrumentalize emerging powers for Western capital’s strategic interests. This is as true for China attempting to do as much as for Western capitals.’

In any case, do motives matter that much in a time of crisis, particularly when the other side is absent from the pitch?

Ideas aplenty

At the start of 2021, the immediate tasks for the world were: share more vaccines now, provide more money for that international endeavour, and get serious about tech transfer to allow production to take place in more facilities around the world.

Just how committed is the Biden administration? A number of its initiatives seemed designed more to project systemic rivalry, particularly against China, than to embrace multilateralism. In early May, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced that Washington would support a waiver on intellectual property for vaccines. A number of countries, led by India and South Africa, had long been calling for the removal of restrictions on the transfer of patents in pharmaceuticals, something that had been agreed at the WTO in 1995. It had become an emotive issue.

Tedros hailed it move as ‘a monumental moment’. The move delighted civil society groups, but startled allies. A number of biotech-strong countries, including Germany, Switzerland, Canada and Britain opposed the idea. The White House is likely to have assumed that it would not prevail, but the initiative secured two goals: it put pressure on big pharma to do more to free up licensing and transferring technology, and it made America look good.

In the same week, Biden declared: ‘Our nation is going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world. I literally have, virtually 40 per cent of the world leaders calling and asking, can we help them. We’re going to try’. He promised that the US would deliver 80 million vaccines, including from AstraZeneca, which had not been approved by his own country’s regulator, the FDA.

By this point, the US had not exported a single vial. A whole year after the establishment of COVAX, a mere 70 million vaccines had been sent through the multilateral facility – a tiny proportion of the not so ambitious two billion target.

To compensate at least in part for the political failures, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worked hard to find practical solutions to help alleviate the suffering. For its part, Chatham House brought together big pharma, leaders of international organisations and health experts in a global vaccine supply chain and manufacturing summit to look for an agreed set of measures to tackle shortages. The March 2021 summit led directly to the establishment of a COVAX Manufacturing Task Force to address bottlenecks.

Yates, who helped to bring the parties together for that summit, also points to the work of the International Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR). In a report commissioned by the WHO and published in mid-May, the group of 13 global statesmen and women, led by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, sketched out a credible road map across all areas of COVID-19 policy, providing a midway point between radicalism – what should be achieved – and realism – what, given the disappointing circumstances, could be achieved.

The IPPPR called for a UN Pandemic Treaty and an International Pandemic Financing Facility that could mobilise funding of up to $10 billion per year. It also proposed a new global surveillance system, in which the WHO would have explicit authority to publish information about outbreaks without the prior approval of national governments and to dispatch experts to investigate pathogens with guaranteed right of access.

In spite of the exhortations and the clear proposals, the chances of countries coming to any form of meaningful consensus on the pandemic remained elusive. Meeting in Rome, the Global Health Summit of the G20 proposed a watered-down push for waivers and stopped short of committing wealthier states to provide more funds for the WHO. A few weeks later, the World Health Assembly, the WHO’s policy-making body, stepped back even further, delaying even consideration of a convention, agreement ‘or other international instruments on pandemic preparedness and response’ until a special conference in November.

On the eve of each of these forums, elder statesmen and women, health experts and activists urged governments to do more. They cited compelling economic arguments. Fully financing ACT-A for 2021 would cost less than one per cent of what governments have spent on stimulus packages for their own citizens.

The task is enormous and urgent. The number of doses needed to vaccinate 70 per cent of the world’s population is a staggering 11 billion. So far only about 1.7 billion have been produced; far, far fewer have been equitably distributed.

Has the West failed – again?

On the eve of the G7, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr John Nkengasong, declared: ‘Our worst nightmare has come to reality’. He added: ‘When this pandemic started, we cautioned that if we do not work in a cooperative way and express global solidarity we may run into a moral catastrophe’.

The messaging NGOs have used to persuade governments has become ever more desperate and ever more instrumentalist. ‘Self-interest’ became too tame. ‘Return on investment’ – a curious term for saving lives – started to be used.

In spite of all the entreaties, COVAX remains low on nations’ priorities. Two reasons point to self-interest of the most unappealing variety. ‘For COVAX to work as its originators intended, it needed essentially all governments to buy into it, rather than making their own deals with potential producers,’ Chatham House experts note in a forthcoming July 2021 research paper. The primary objective of the US, UK, and EU was to secure vaccines for their own populations. ‘There was therefore always an inevitable tension, even contradiction, between the expressions of support for equitable global access by governments and their simultaneous pursuit of bilateral deals for domestic populations’, the paper notes.

One example spoke volumes. French president Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen toyed with the idea of circumventing COVAX by donating directly – with supplies labelled ‘Team Europe’ alongside colour-coded maps to track the destinations of vaccines from rival producers. In the UK, Boris Johnson was reported to have wanted the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in conjunction with Oxford University, to be labelled with Union Jacks. Compassion wrapped up in a logo. Why bother with a centralized distribution network when you can earn plaudits for ostentatious generosity?

Considerations such as these formed the backdrop for the G7 summit in mid-June. For the first time since the pandemic started, leaders of the richest nations gathered by a Cornish beach to discuss COVID-19, climate change – and the rise of China. Their deliberations were not helped by a renewed bout of in-fighting between the UK and the EU. Biden used the meeting to frame geopolitics as a contest between democracies and autocrats and called for a Western infrastructure alternative to China’s Belt and Road.

The final decision – to provide fewer than the one billion vaccines that had been trailed beforehand, with no mechanism for delivery and with a vague deadline – was denounced by experts and activists. Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister who had been one of the most active lobbyists for radical action, called it an ‘unforgivable moral failure’.

China and Russia lost no time in denouncing both the tough tone of the G7 communique towards both countries and the weakness of its vaccine response. A few days after the summit, the US said it was sending 80 vials of vaccine to Trinidad and Tobago, a decision that was mocked in the Chinese media. ‘Would this be selected for the Worst Public Relations Award of the Year?’ the official Xinhua news agency asked in a carefully coordinated set of social media posts.

Because of the length and breadth of the G7 closing statement, some useful decisions received less prominence than they otherwise might have done, such as the agreement to establish a Global Health Board that could improve the early-warning system for future pandemics. Few would disagree however with an assessment that the G7 had fallen woefully short, suggesting that this gathering of nations which now constitutes less than half the world’s GDP is losing ever more influence.

The economist and long-time adviser to the UN, Jeffrey Sachs, was scathing in his assessment. Describing gatherings such as the one in Cornwall as an anachronism, Sachs argued: ‘The G7 is particularly irrelevant because its leaders don’t deliver on their promises. They like making symbolic statements, not solving problems. Worse, they give the appearance of solving global problems, while really leaving them to fester. This year’s summit was no different.’

Will the G20 meeting in Rome at the end of October, with its wider representation, do any better? More nations and more political systems will be represented. That is an opportunity to do business face-to-face. It is also opportunity for more grandstanding between systemic rivals.

Poorer nations and power

Even at the height of Cold War tensions, the US and Russia were part of a global coalition to eradicate smallpox. Yet with COVID-19, big-power collaboration has been virtually non-existent, with little prospect for improvement.

Biden’s instruction to his intelligence to ‘redouble’ their efforts and identify a ‘definitive conclusion’ within 90 days on how the virus was first transmitted in humans has enraged the Chinese government.

In February, when urging rich nations to agree a target of sending five per cent of vaccines to poorer ones – something they are as far away as ever from achieving – Macron said: ‘It is an unprecedented acceleration of global inequality and it is politically unsustainable too because it’s paving bodog sportsbook review the way for a war of influence over vaccines. You can see the Chinese strategy, and the Russian strategy too’. In other words, competition should be the key driver.

The question now is: have the US and its allies left it too late? The poorest countries hit hardest in the last few months may well remember the fact that America was planning to inoculate its children while the elderly and frail and key workers in Africa and Latin America were dying.

Those countries who were helped out at their time of most need may retain a residual sense of affinity, perhaps obligation, towards China and Russia. Chatham House’s Yu Jie quotes a Chinese proverb: ‘You always offer the burning coals at times of heaviest snow’.

Perhaps with this in mind, American officials insist that they are not trying to pressurise countries to make a zero-sum choice, on health or broader partnerships. As Blinken told a NATO meeting in March: ‘The United States won’t force allies into an ‘us-or-them’ choice with China’.

Several Chatham House experts argue that if the US and its allies act quickly and deftly, they may be able to repair some of the damage. ‘Helping developing countries to vaccinate their populations represents a tremendous opportunity for the West to make up lost ground,’ Yates argues. ‘Not only will this potentially win over wavering non-aligned nations; it will accelerate the end of the pandemic and bring disproportionate benefits to their own economies as the world economy recovers.’

Vines says of Africa: ‘There is plenty of room left for the Americans to re-engage and be involved. This is also where the EU has a role.’ He adds: ‘African countries like choice.’

Perhaps developing countries can make a virtue of this unrelenting soft-power rivalry. Imagine a situation in which production increases and the competing powers vie to entice recipient countries. They would compete against each on the efficacy and reliability of vaccines, on cost and terms – and on geo-strategic allegiances.

‘Is it the end of the world if America, China and the others compete to ensure vaccinations?’ asks Chatham House chair Jim O’Neill, who has been on a number of inter-governmental preparatory groups for the G7 and G20.

This is not as it should be. In a perfect world, multilateral and cooperation would be the guiding principles. And where such collaboration exists, it should be promoted and pursued. But this crisis has shown the world at its most imperfect. If rivalry has to prevail, it can be turned around to the advantage of those who most need assistance.

John Kampfner has recently become a Consulting Fellow at Chatham House and has written the first in a three-part series on competitive rivalries in an era of global crisis. The first report, on the Covid pandemic, was published on 30 June. He is also a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

John established the Creative Industries Federation to much acclaim in 2014, providing a single voice for the UK’s creative sector. For eight years he was founder Chair of Turner Contemporary, one of the country’s most successful art galleries. He is now Chair of the House of Illustration. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for his services to the arts by Bath Spa University in 2019.

For four years running he was named one of the most influential Londoners in the Evening Standard Progress 1000 survey. Fluent in German and Russian, he regularly speaks at political conferences and cultural festivals around the world.

To read the full commentary from Chatham House, please click here.

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Ryan Murphy — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 18:24:19 +0000

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed many problems in American society ranging from public health and racial disparities to economic challenges and supply chain limitations. As was true with many nations around the world, the United States was caught without a detailed plan for dealing with a pandemic. Hospitals were unprepared for the deluge of patients and health care providers did not have access to the supplies they needed to protect themselves. State and national leaders provided mixed cues on how to shut down and when to reopen, and there continue to be sharp partisan differences in how people feel about wearing masks and getting vaccinations.

The result has been nearly 600,000 American fatalities, the loss of millions of jobs, and a widening in the inequities that exist based on race, gender, age, income, and geography. While more than half of Americans now have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, a significant number indicate they don’t want to be vaccinated. That reticence runs the risk that the virus will not be eradicated and could return at some point in the future.

Among the most fundamental challenges that remain as we move forward is the fact that most pharmaceuticals and protective personal equipment are manufactured outside the United States. It was a shock for many people to learn during the pandemic that many of their essential medicines and products came from outside the country. In keeping with trends that have emerged in recent decades with manufacturing in general, China and India are big suppliers of medicinal drugs, as are places such as Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, South Africa, and Brazil. Most American drug companies have outsourced manufacturing to foreign locations. In that situation, supply chains are long and there often are logistical problems that limit availability of needed treatments.

Now, a new report from the Washington University Olin School of Business outlines several reasons why this is the case and what we need to do about it. In terms of the causes of drug shortages, authors Tony Sardella and Paolo De Bona cite a 2019 U.S. Food and Drug Administration analysis that emphasized three factors: “1) the lack of incentives to produce less profitable drugs; 2) the market not recognizing or rewarding manufacturer for mature quality management systems, 3) logistical and regulatory challenges that make it difficult to recover after a disruption.” Taken together, these problems help people understand how we reached the current point and what leaders can do to address these matters.

According to the authors, there are a number of ways to improve the situation. These steps include decreasing dependence on foreign drug-makers, developing U.S. drug manufacturing, providing financial support for domestic capabilities, and offering faster drug approval processes.

Decrease single-country dependence

Part of the current challenge is the heavy reliance on foreign manufacturers. Few medications are made in the United States and that creates domestic risks. In a world with a considerable number of geopolitical uncertainties, it is challenging to rely on nations with which America has an adversarial relationship. Right now, there are many complicating issues in the relationship with China including trade, national security, and foreign policy. As the two countries move from a relationship that emphasized cooperation to one that is either competitive or conflictual, the risk of medical drugs being made in China increases. Depending on how relations ebb and flow, there could be times where China needs to redirect drug and PPE manufacturing to domestic needs as opposed to foreign ones. Or they could use its control of drug production to reward allies and punish adversaries. Either way, it is risky for the United States to rely heavily upon China during a time of considerable tension.

Develop U.S. drug manufacturing capabilities

At the same time, it makes sense to reduce reliance upon foreign manufacturers and develop U.S. drug manufacturing capabilities. For medicines that are essential to the health and well-being of Americans, it is vital to have some drug manufacturing options. That type of capability would insulate the U.S. from international disruptions and supply chain logistical problems. The same is true for necessary PPE and medical devices. There is legislation pending in the U.S. Congress that is designed to encourage American drug manufacturing.

Strengthen “made in America” requirements

The U.S. government long has had a “buy American” policy but it was vaguely worded and weakly enforced, so that stance has lost much of its relevance. President Biden has signed an executive order that clarifies the definition and puts stronger regulatory protections in place to make sure the policy is implemented. The order includes a mandate that American-made products must include materials with at least 55% domestic content. Companies can assemble products in the United States but the component parts must come from within the country. Having stronger “country-of-origin” requirements would boost the meaningfulness of “buy American” provisions.

Define the market to include friendly nations

In thinking about domestic drug manufacturing capabilities, it is important to consider the overall drug marketplace and how American firms fit into the global landscape. It would obviously be costly to cease all foreign operations and rely only on U.S.-based facilities. But it is important to think about the geographical combination that would bring needed security to American health products and medicines. It may take a novel combination of domestic and friendly foreign sites to ensure products are available when the U.S. needs them.

Avoid guaranteed contracts

Protecting the production of essential medicines requires a manufacturing competition policy that actually is pro-competition. Guaranteeing contracts for one or two firms in a sector gives them enormous power and sometimes squeezes out competitors. It is important to spread federal resources around so that more companies benefit and more have incentives to manufacture drugs for the United States.

Provide financial support

There are a variety of ways the federal government can provide assistance to domestic drug producers such as tax credits, loans, infrastructure investment, and direct support for production facilities. Any of those methods would improve the U.S. manufacturing climate and make it possible for firms to re-shore drug production and strengthen domestic supply chains.

Offer faster drug approval processes

The last recommendation is to expedite federal drug approval processes. Right now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration protocols require lengthy times and considerable resources to navigate. Anything that speeds up the process, while still protecting patients, would be helpful. Expediting these processes would make it possible for companies to get drugs to market quicker and offer assistance during vital times. This would ultimately help companies financially and provide drug access to patients who would benefit from its use.

Darrell M. West is vice president and director of Governance Studies and holds the Douglas Dillon Chair. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of TechTank. His current research focuses on artificial intelligence, robotics, and the future of work. West is also director of the John Hazen White Manufacturing Initiative. Prior to coming to Brookings, he was the John Hazen White Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University.

To read the full commentary from the Brookings Institute, please click here.

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Rachel Accorsi — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 12:24:53 +0000

Sustainability has two relevant definitions:

“the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level”, and as

“Sustainable development” – “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Sustainability of the WTO

Applying the first of these two definitions of sustainability: the WTO must not continue as it is. It must succeed as a forum for negotiations, where agreements evolve and be relevant; it must be a place where disputes are settled; and it must be a fount of information on every subject that a national trade policy maker requires to make informed decisions. Continued underinvestment in the institution is not acceptable. Maintaining the status quo can only lead to further disaffection.

The economic history of the last seven decades has validated the wisdom of the founders in their decision to create the multilateral trading system. There is only one sensible world order and it includes a global framework for rules-based trade. However, stasis will not suffice. It is necessary to respond now to the challenges before us – dealing with the pandemic, supporting the needed economic recovery, taking responsibility for stewardship of the planet and its peoples, and WTO institutional reform.

Recognizing that their relations in the field of trade and economic endeavour should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, and expanding the production of and trade in goods and services, while allowing for the optimal use of the world’s resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the environment and to enhance the means for doing so in a manner consistent with their respective needs and concerns at different levels of economic development, … .

There is no better place to start a conversation on this subject than to examine the activities of the WTO in relation to the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aim to transform our world by the year 2030:

The SDGs explicitly identify trade, alongside finance, technology and capacity building, as a means of implementation, that is, as a tool to achieve the SDGs. This perspective closely mirrors the WTO’s founding charter, where global co-operation in trade is a means to unleash growth, alleviate poverty, raise living standards and ensure full employment, while also protecting the environment.

In a 2018 publication, Mainstreaming trade to achieve the sustainable development goals, the WTO looked at how its work could support efforts to fulfill the SDGs. That report emphasized nine of the seventeen SDGs, in the sections which are summarized here:

How trade contributes to delivering key Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 1: No Poverty

WTO 2018: There is increasing evidence that well planned and strategically executed trade policy initiatives can impact positively on sustainable poverty reduction. Trade opening has also generated higher living standards through greater productivity, increased competition and more choice for consumers and better prices in the marketplace.

The UN cites two specific goals:

By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.
By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.

It should be beyond doubt that by these two agreed measures, the trading system has contributed toward this goal. Progress has been made toward lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Trade contributes to higher living standards through productivity increases, made it possible by access to global markets and sources of supply. Decades of empirical evidence indicate that the countries that have sustained high per capita growth rates long enough to transform people’s living standards and life prospects used the global economy to drive growth.

Broadly open global markets provided demand far larger than the home market, to be sure, but also served as a source of ideas, technology, and knowhow. While the years before the pandemic saw substantial progress on reducing poverty, the countries that lagged behind were generally those that had been unable to break into world markets for goods and services, or only managed to export unprocessed minerals.

Today, trade plays an important role in the economy of developing countries. To have an idea, trade now represents 34% of developing countries’ GDP on average – compared to 20% for advanced countries. Fueled by trade, real GDP per person in emerging economies more than doubled from 1995 to 2019 and facilitated rapid, broad-based economic expansion that has narrowed the income gap between countries and within them.

And, in addition to accelerating economic growth, trade also makes available the necessary resources to implement other development targets in the social and environmental spheres.

There are two groups of challenges to this claim. There are growing voices against globalization as a creator of income inequality within and perhaps among countries. There is also criticism that economic growth is potentially incompatible with environmental goals.

Neither set of criticisms is borne out by the facts. Widely differing levels of income inequality in countries similarly exposed to globalization suggest trade is not the determining factor.

SDG 2: Zero Hunger

WTO 2018: Eliminating subsidies that cause distortions in agriculture markets will lead to fairer more competitive markets helping both farmers and consumers while contributing to food security. The WTO’s 2015 decision on export competition eliminated export subsidies in agriculture, thereby delivering on Target 2.B of this goal.

A well-functioning multilateral trading system is imperative for the realization of SDG 2. In remarks at the FAO in 2017, I made the following points

It is widely acknowledged that trade openness can make a positive contribution to each of the four dimensions of food security as espoused by the FAO, namely availability, access, utilization and stability. Trade openness increases the availability of food by enabling products to flow from surplus to deficit areas, connecting the “land of the plenty to the land of the few”. It enhances access as it contributes to faster economic growth, higher incomes and higher purchasing power. Indeed, in response to the transmission of unbiased price signals, it encourages an effective allocation of resources based on comparative advantages, thus limiting inefficiencies.

Trade openness also facilitates utilisation and improved nutrition by increasing the diversity of national diets and accelerating the diffusion of sound SPS regulations around the world. Lastly, it enhances food availability and reduces price volatility, as risks associated with domestic food production are greater than pooled production of countries worldwide.

In addition, the elimination of export subsidies has levelled the playing field and provided opportunities for farmers in developing countries to compete. This has increased their incomes and enhanced their living standards.

By making more affordable goods available at home, trade enables poor households to purchase more with their income, particularly essential foodstuffs. Better and less distorted access to foreign markets for agricultural goods that the rural poor farmers produce also opens new employment opportunities for them.

One lesson from COVID-19 is that stockpiling and on-shoring with added domestic investment are not a sufficient substitute for trade flows.

As my colleague, DDG Xiaozhun Yi recently noted,

The trade coverage of the regular import-facilitating measures stood at USD 731.3 billion (up from USD 544.7 billion in the previous period) while that of import restrictions came in at USD 440.9 billion (down from USD 746.9 billion). This is a positive development. This drop was likely a result of the sharp decline in overall global trade flows, the diversion of governments’ attention towards fighting the pandemic – through trade policy as well as other areas, and a general commitment to keep trade flowing.

The export restrictions on food seen in the Spring have been substantially rolled back.

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

WTO 2018: One of the main objectives under SDG 3 is to ensure access to affordable medicines for all. An important amendment to the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement recently entered into force. This measure will make it easier for developing countries to have a secure legal pathway to access affordable medicines in line with Target 3.B of this goal.

The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that trade can be responsive to human health and well-being. There was more than a doubling of trade in goods relevant to fighting the disease from 2Q 2019 to 2Q 2020.

The next challenge will be the distribution of the vaccines. Trade is playing – and will continue to play – a key role in the manufacturing and distribution of vaccines around the world. Leveraging supply chains for everything from pharmaceutical glass, syringes and refrigeration equipment to the vaccines themselves, where possible, would help scale up production more efficiently than trying to do everything domestically. The trading system must help deal with any cross-border logistics challenges that exist.

WTO Agreements give Members ample space to pursue health protection objectives and promotes cooperation in the pursuit of health. In the area of food safety and animal and plant health, the SPS Agreement requires that measures be based on science and Members are strongly encouraged to follow international standards. The TBT Agreement also strongly encourages that health protection regulations for drugs, PPE or medical devices be based on relevant international standards. The TBT and SPS Agreements also promote regulatory cooperation among trade partners – such as mutual recognition of certification – which can help increase global access to essential health products.

To this should be added an immediate update of the Pharmaceutical and Information Technology Agreements to cover, among other goods, all those which will facilitate the international movement of vaccines, medicines, equipment (including production equipment), PPE, and IT equipment relevant to fighting COVID-19. Not only should duty-free treatment be provided but also trade facilitation measures to lower the costs of trade and speed delivery of essential goods. Medical services should be covered in a companion agreement with the same objective.

SDG 5: Gender Equality

WTO 2018: Trade can create opportunities for women’s employment and economic development. Through trade, job opportunities for women have increased significantly. Jobs in export sectors also tend to have better pay and conditions. Export sectors are an important job provider for women in developing countries.

A group of WTO Members agreed to establish an Informal Working Group on Trade and Gender on 23 September 2020, marking the next phase of an initiative started in 2017 to increase the participation of women in trade. The online meeting to launch the new WTO working group was held at the invitation of Iceland and Botswana.

Women’s empowerment through trade is an important part of the WTO’s current narrative. There will undoubtedly be a further effort to make this more concrete for MC12, the 2021 WTO Ministerial Conference. Given that internet access is a boon for micro, small and medium enterprises, in which tend to be disproportionately represented as workers and entrepreneurs, the flexibilities offered by e-commerce should continue to be a great equalizer in these areas, where individual initiative and ingenuity is the first key to market entry. The e-commerce talks as well as those aimed at making the trading system more responsive to the needs of micro, small and medium enterprises should prove beneficial to the empowerment of women through trade.

Moreover, the choice of the first woman Director- General of the WTO provides a role model for women advancing in the field of trade policy.

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

WTO 2018: Trade-led inclusive economic growth enhances a country’s income-generating capacity, which is one of the essential prerequisites for achieving sustainable development. The WTO’s Aid for Trade initiative can make a big difference in supplementing domestic efforts in building trade capacity, and SDG 8 contains a specific target for countries to increase support under this initiative.

Trade is very important in the attainment of SDG 8 as it is generally described in the Agenda 2030 as an engine for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction.

Opening up to trade affects growth positively through a number of channels. Trade improves resource allocation. It allows each country to specialize in the production of the good or service it can produce relatively cheaper and import the other goods and services, thus exploiting comparative advantages. By extending the size of the market in which the firm operates beyond national border, trade allows firms to exploit economies of scale and become more productive. Trade also affects long-term growth since it gives access to more advanced technological inputs available in the global market and because it enhances the incentives to innovate.

The rise of populism in the industrialized countries indicates that providing opportunities for decent work and experiencing the fruits of economic growth are not solely a concern for developing countries. David Riccardo’s voice now has increasing competition among economists who focus on a rising tide not necessarily lifting all boats.

Technological progress and trade have been key engines of global prosperity. Resistance to innovation and retreat from global integration are not options that will help eliminate extreme poverty. At the same time, policymakers need to ensure that benefits are spread more widely. A reallocation of resources is often necessary to reap the substantial benefits from trade. Governments need to be better prepared for disruptions, including those caused by the pandemic, and enable their peoples to take advantage of new opportunities.

Like other structural change – notably change triggered by technological progress – trade can create adjustment pressures for certain segments in society, both in developing and developed countries. It is therefore important to have in place appropriate complementary domestic policies to ensure that the gains from trade are more evenly shared and the trade-related adjustment costs affecting certain regions and individuals are mitigated. This can contribute to make the gains from trade truly bodog sportsbook review inclusive and sustainable.

The global rules for trade must be seen to deliver fairness. The WTO needs to be widely known for providing a level playing field for trade. Factory workers, farmers, designers of apps, must all feel that they can rely on the rules of the trading system to provide opportunities to serve markets abroad as well as being able to source what they need from suppliers whether at home or abroad. Trade must be able to flow on the basis of competitive merit. The core underlying principle of the WTO, although unstated, is that market forces are to determine competitive outcomes.

In sports, another area of international competition with roots in antiquity, the Olympics have long strived to provide equality of opportunity to the extent possible. To counter crimped nationalistic views but allow scope for pride and dignity that comes from excelling on a world platform, the trading rules have to be improved. The system needs to be widely seen as rewarding those who excel in the marketplace on equal terms to the extent that this can be achieved. The WTO must combine the heritage from Ancient Greece of the agora, the marketplace, with that of the Olympic stadium.

SDG 8 contains a lot more to unpack. For example, it includes as a target “endeavour to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation”, as well as youth unemployment. WTO Members are addressing the former (see environmental sections of these remarks) but not directly as far as I know, the latter.

One of the targets of SDG 8 is to “encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services”. There is a current WTO Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) launched at 11th Ministerial Conference at Buenos Aires in December 2017 aimed at assuring improved participation of MSMEs in the multilateral trading system. Work has progressed very substantially over the last three years and is seen as particularly relevant to the contribution that the WTO can make to economic recovery from the current pandemic.

Trade finance is also a focus of the WTO, particularly for Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises. The WTO, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and B20 Saudi Arabia issued a joint statement on 9 July pointing to the diminishing availability of trade finance. Warning that gaps between trade finance supply and demand could seriously impede the ability of trade to support post COVID-19 economic recovery, they are urging private and public-sector actors to work together to address shortages.

Another of the targets of SDG 8 reads:

take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms

Forced labor is not a topic on the current WTO agenda, but it has been discussed. Although the WTO has not taken a multilateral decision to address this issue, this does not prevent individual governments from adopting and taking measures that they deem necessary. GATT Article XX General Exceptions permits measures dealing with products relating to prison labour and measures necessary to protect human life. On core labor standards, WTO Members have sought coherence and recognized the role of the ILO in its Singapore Ministerial Declaration. The WTO General Council in 2003 agreed on a waiver that gives legal certainty to domestic measures taken under the Kimberley Process aimed at curbing trade in conflict diamonds, the mining of which often involves forced labor.

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

WTO 2018: Trade produces dynamic gains in the economy by increasing competition and the transfer of technology, knowledge and innovation. Open markets have been identified as a key determinant of trade and investment between developing and developed countries allowing for the transfer of technologies which result in industrialization and development, helping to achieve SDG 9.

The WTO deserves good grades on fulfilling this SDG even were the benefits of the system were limited to the movement of goods across borders. The products covered by the information technology agreement foster the global availability the tools that connect budding inventors, innovative individuals, making possible the world wide web. The WTO provides more than that, however, as noted in the WTO’s “World Trade Report 2020 government policies to promote innovation in the digital age”

Open and transparent trade policies contribute to innovation through improved access to foreign markets and increased competition, which provide firms with incentives to invest more in R&D. This is true for both developed and developing economies: a study of 27 emerging economies shows that both competition from foreign firms and linkages with foreign firms, through importing, exporting or supplying multinationals, increase product innovation, the adoption of new technologies and quality upgrading….

The basic set of GATT and WTO agreements provide a framework that foster “the development of an ICT-enabled economy in countries across all levels of development”. The framework provides for non-discrimination, transparency, reciprocity and the prohibition of unnecessarily trade restrictive measures. This framework includes the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement, the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

Innovation will be key to advancing sustainability. Just as we needed to innovate our way out of the COVID-19 crisis – with adaptable supply chains, digitalized economies, and turbocharged vaccine development – we will also need to innovate our way out of the current environmental crisis. A striking example of this –is the way renewable energy, especially solar power, is fast becoming cheaper and more cost effective than fossil fuels. This could be the gamechanger in climate battle. And it is at least partly thanks to trade/globalization’s role in spreading renewable technologies, fuelling innovation and driving down production costs. It turns out that the very things many people thought needed ‘fixing’ or ‘resetting’ at the beginning of the pandemic – globalization, free markets, supply chains, corporate innovation – are actually what got us through the crisis, delivered a vaccine, and could provide us with the tools to fight climate change or plastics pollution.

The links between development, technology and trade have been widely recognized. For most developing economies, accessing and deploying new technologies is the primary source of economic growth. Imported capital goods and technical intermediate inputs can directly improve productivity by being placed into production processes. There is significant evidence that global value chains are a powerful channel of technology dissemination.

Supply chain linkages intensify contacts between foreign firms and domestic suppliers and therefore open up channels for flows of knowledge and know-how. When a foreign firm and a local supplier are part of the same production chain, they need to interact and coordinate to guarantee a smooth functioning of the chain. Face-to-face communication with key foreign personnel will facilitate the transfer of non-codified knowledge and increase domestic innovative capacity. Also, foreign outsourcing firms are more willing to transfer the know-how and technology required for an efficient production of the outsourced input, because they will eventually be the consumer of that input. Offshoring of tradable services has also been key in the development of these industries in the developing world.

SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

WTO 2018: At the global level, changes in development patterns have been transforming prospects of the world’s poorest people, decreasing inequality between countries. WTO rules try to reduce the impact of existing inequalities through the principle of Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries. This allows the use of flexibilities by developing and least-developed countries to take into account their capacity constraints.

A rising tide lifts most if not all boats, but some boats ride higher in the water than others. Within industrialized countries, there are wide variations of participation in income and sharing of the benefits of trade. This is mainly due to domestic policies, not international trade agreements. But trade agreements can be made more responsive to this set of problems. Political support for open international trade depends substantially on finding answers to questions of income inequality. One obvious area of response is the availability of trade remedies under the WTO agreements. These were conceptually important to the structure of the GATT and the WTO. Trade remedies were designed to offset unfair and injurious practices and to smooth adjustment to international competition. That basic concept was lost sight of during the last several decades, and costs are now being incurred. When trade remedies become unavailable and job losses occur, domestic support for the “rules-based” trading system is undermined. (See also the discussion of level playing field issues under SDG 8).

Productivity gains from new technologies are reducing the demand for labor in more traditional sectors, such as agriculture or manufacturing. This so-called “fourth industrial revolution” is not going to make all jobs disappear, but it is bringing about enormous changes. While these processes have brought progress overall, it is important to recognize that not everybody has been able to benefit and participate.

This is a challenge facing governments and societies everywhere – in both developed and developing economies. Sustainable and balanced economic progress will hinge on the ability of economies to adjust to changes and promote greater inclusiveness. There is not a ‘one size fits all’ recipe, approaches need to be tailored to a country’s specific situation and mainstreamed into development policy objectives to ensure that trade is inclusive, that it benefits the largest possible sections of the population and that those who may be losing out are provided assistance to adjust.

A challenge that the WTO faces is how to balance the rights and obligations across its diverse membership. In the past this has mostly been done by the adoption of special and differential treatment provisions in the WTO Agreements that in many cases give developing countries flexibilities in undertaking commitments. Views have varied among Members over the potential benefits of these provisions. Many believe that special and differential treatment, particularly for the least developed, needs additional elements to be effective. Being freer of obligations for those with limited capacity to participate beneficially in world trade does not convey an advantage. Moreover, if there are no new agreements, there is only a stock of S&DT that may not deliver much more that is of use. The entire approach to development needs fresh thinking.

SDG 14: Life Below Water

WTO 2018: The WTO plays an important role in supporting global, regional and local efforts to tackle environmental degradation of our oceans under SDG 14. The Decision on Fisheries Subsidies taken by WTO members in December 2017 is a step forward in multilateral efforts to comply with SDG Target 14.6, committing members to prohibit subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, and eliminate subsidies that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, with special and differential treatment for developing and least-developed countries. Members committed to fulfilling this commitment by the 12th Ministerial Conference.

There is currently active engagement of WTO Members in negotiations to reach this goal. While the trade aspect of the negotiations is certainly an important element, it is worth highlighting that the principal objective in the negotiating mandate is an environmental one. This is a first for the WTO. A successful conclusion of these negotiations will demonstrate the importance and flexibility of the multilateral trading system in pursuing global aims that go beyond the purely economic.

SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

WTO 2018: SDG 17 recognizes trade as a means of implementation for the 2030 Agenda. The targets under this goal call for: countries to promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system; the increase of developing countries’ exports and doubling the share of exports of least-developed countries (LDCs); and the implementation of duty-free and quota-free market access for LDCs with transparent and simple rules of origin for exported goods. The WTO is the key channel for delivering these goals.

The UN states the following with respect to trade and SDG 17:

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development defines international trade as “an engine for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction, [that] contributes to the promotion of sustainable development”. The adoption of Agenda 2030 commits UN member states to continue to promote “meaningful” trade liberalization over the next 15 years to help maximize the contribution of trade to the success of the sustainable development agenda. In this context, international trade is expected to play its role as a means of implementation for the achievement of the SDGs.

As major institutional stakeholders on trade and the SDGs issues, UNCTAD, WTO, and International Trade Center monitor trends, analyze policy and build analytical capacity for making international trade an engine for sustainable development.

The WTO works closely with FAO with respect to achieving SDG 2. With respect to accessions, the WTO works closely with the World Bank, the IMF and regional development banks and UN agencies. With respect to the environment, the WTO works with UNEP. These are a small fraction of the collaborative efforts that support the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals.

In order to further support efforts at the national level to achieve the SDGs and to ensure that the benefits of trade are spread more widely, the WTO together with our partners in the Geneva Trade hub, UNCTAD and ITC, also recently launched the SDG Trade Monitor, at SDGTRADE.ORG. This website is an online repository of trade-specific development indicators including MFN and preferential tariff rates, amongst others. This database will allow policymakers, trade professionals and researchers to explore the relationship between trade and sustainable development, and to support data driven trade policies.

By implementing responsive, data-driven polices trade can serve as a driver of development, there are impressive figures to confirm that this is the case. For instance, developing countries’ share of global trade has jumped from 25% in 1995 to 43% in 2017. This has happened not just because of growth in the large emerging markets of China, India and Brazil but also because of increased participation by small, former LDCs such as Samoa, Cabo Verde and the Maldives. All of these countries have graduated from LDC to developing country status and Vanuatu is expected to do so very soon. These countries mainstreamed their trade policies to tackle capacity constraints, using trade and attracting FDI, to advance their economic growth and development which, in turn, helped them to achieve the required social benchmarks they needed to graduate from the ranks of the world’s “least developed countries”.

Recent WTO negotiating outcomes also prove that the system does deliver for development. Successes include the Trade Facilitation Agreement, the expansion of the Information Technology Agreement, the amendment of the TRIPS Agreement easing access to medicines and the agreement to abolish agricultural export subsidies.

The different approaches represented in each of these agreements show that the system can rise to the level of being adaptable and dynamic in its response to emerging challenges. Members must now show sufficient flexibility in their negotiations on fisheries subsidies, WTO reform, and e-commerce, if these subjects with important implications for SDG attainment are to move to a successful conclusion.

This adaptability will also be crucial to an effective response to COVID-19, which is likely to have a severe negative impact on the achievement of the 2030 SDG Agenda.

The Environmental Dimension

The WTO is at the dawn of a new era of addressing deepened and broadened environmental concerns of its Members. The remaining 8 SDGs, those not highlighted in the 2018 WTO publication cited throughout the preceding sections of this narrative are front and center in the emerging WTO focus.

Trade policies, pursued through WTO agreements, have a huge potential to support environmental sustainability. For example, reviving and quickly concluding an Environmental Goods and Services Agreement (EGSA) would serve SDG goals 6 and 7, Clean Water and Sanitation, and Affordable and Clean Energy; SDG Goal 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities; Goal 12 Responsible Consumption and Production and Goal 13 Climate Action.

A study by the World Bank found that eliminating import barriers in the top 18 developing countries ranked by emissions of greenhouse gases would increase imports by 63% for energy-efficient lighting, 23% for wind power generation, 14% for solar power generation and close to 5% for clean coal technology. At the same time, more open trade in environmental goods and services can help domestic companies to tap into a rapidly growing global market estimated at US$ 2 trillion per year by 2020.

An EGSA and expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), together with an increase in the coverage of GATS, would address in several respects these goals, making more available the goods, for example, to enable cleaner transportation and cleaner air and water, and better handling of waste. Using trade to assist in creating the circular economy; dealing with plastic waste, all would make cities more livable. Climate would be addressed directly as Members consider initiatives for curb fossil fuel subsidies.

Just last month, during WTO Trade and Environment Week, several Members took an important step forward for expanding the contribution of trade to the SDGs by launching two initiatives. The first consists of “structured discussions” on trade and environmental sustainability launched by 50 WTO Members. The second is the informal dialogue on plastic pollution and sustainable plastics trade launched by 8 WTO Members.

The structured discussions seek to identify areas of common interest and work towards concrete deliverables on trade and sustainability. The group plans to have its first meeting in early 2021. The initiative seeks to build on past efforts by WTO Members to address issues such as circular economy, natural disasters, climate change, fossil fuel subsidies reform, the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and the Blue economy, among other issues that are at the core of the SDGs 7 on clean energy, 12 on sustainable production and consumption, 13 on climate change and 15 on life on land.

Trade and Environment Week also saw the inaugural meeting of the WTO informal dialogue on plastics pollution and sustainable plastics trade. The dialogue seeks to identify areas where the WTO can complement global efforts to fight plastic pollution, for example by improving transparency and coherence of plastic-related trade measures, promoting best practices and tracking trade in plastics, exploring areas for collective action and cooperating with other international processes. These efforts could make a tangible contribution to achieve not only SDG12 on sustainable production and consumption, but also SDG 14 on ocean health, SDG 15 on life on land, SDG 11 on sustainable cities and SDG 8 on decent work, among other SDGs.

One area of great potential for constructive bilateral and multilateral discussions is trade and climate change. The WTO, and in particular its Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) has a standing mandate to discuss trade and environmental measures with potential significant trade effects and to arrive at coherent, most fit-for-purpose solutions. Several countries have recently started to look at the adoption of border carbon adjustment measures (BCAs) to support their ambitious climate mitigation plans. The European Union expects to have a concrete proposal by next June and a measure in place by January 2023, at the latest, Canada, in its recently announced 2020 Fall Economic Statement, and Mexico, in its nationally determined contribution, has also shown interest in such measures. It is my understanding that the next Administration in the United States also envisages a BCA as part of its climate ambition.

It would be an understatement to say that these discussions will not be easy and the potential for trade conflict and retaliation is ever present. To avoid a counterproductive clash over climate-related trade measures, we need to have serious and constructive discussions at the WTO on how to ensure that trade-related measures adopted – and trade more broadly – contribute effectively to transatlantic ambitions on climate change but are also fair and well calibrated in terms of their trade impact. It is worth noting that discussions on the EU plan to adopt a BCA have already started at the WTO, including inquiries in the form of specific trade concerns in three different Committees. The new US Administration could ensure that discussions move forward in a proactive and constructive way, adding the US unique perspective and expertise to the table.

In the same vein, other trade and climate topics, such as fossil fuel subsidy reform or facilitating trade in low carbon technologies also seem to offer constructive avenues for transatlantic cooperation. If the recent trend of ambitious carbon neutrality pledges continues, the multilateral trading system will certainly have to play its role in addressing the intersection between climate action and the cross-border flow of goods and services. Transatlantic co-operation on these topics could become an important driver of concrete action on these important issues, all of which have big implications for achieving SDG 13

Goal 4 Quality Education

This goal is addressed in a myriad of ways by the WTO. ITA makes more available computers, smart phones and tablets. E-commerce talks and the moratorium on imposing customs duties on electronic transmission facilitate international transfer of the tools to educate. The Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) helps to increase capacity of the least developed through the spread of technology and information. The Cotton Consultative Forum for Development is currently working on identifying projects to assist cotton farmers in least developed countries to gain the knowledge as well as the means necessary to increase the value that they can get from cotton by-products. The WTO is active in providing technical assistance to acceding countries, and more generally to developing and least-developed countries with respect to the full range of WTO agreements.

Trade in education services can help to increase the supply of education and investment in the sector, particularly in higher education, thereby, contributing to enhancing access and quality in education. In this context, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which aims at progressively liberalizing trade in services, including trade in education services, is a means of promoting economic growth and development. Leading universities can more easily establish campuses in countries making commitments to openness in this sector. The GATS provides enough flexibility to craft commitments reflecting countries’ needs and priorities in a way that allows them to reap the benefits of opening trade in education with the aim of achieving the SDGs.

Goal 15, Life on Land

Promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems. Being able to have efficient use of land depends very much on trade. Standards must be known, transparency is needed, they must not be protectionist, developing countries must be helped to meet international standards. The WTO and other partner international organizations have set up the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF). The STDF promotes improved food safety and animal and plant health capacity in developing countries by convening and connecting diverse stakeholders from across its projects, and by piloting and learning from innovative, collaborative and cross-cutting approaches. Technical assistance can help lessen the use of pesticides and herbicides, including through the fund-raising efforts of the Director-General’s Consultative Framework for Cotton Development Assistance. Curbing subsidies yields more environmentally friendly use of land for crops.

Goal 16, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

It should not be surprising that the multilateral trading system, conceived during a 30-year war that took place in two great catastrophic phases separately mainly by a deep economic depression, was intended to be an antidote to conflict. It was designed to maintain peace.

These roots were over time forgotten – something that historians might come across – until these last few years, when conflict-affected countries, Afghanistan, Liberia, countries of the Middle East and of the Horn of Africa sought entry into the WTO. For them, the contribution of integration into the global economy, of thereby increasing the likelihood of stability, the precondition for economic development, the link of trade to peace, the cause of trade for peace, is real, immediate and profound. These fragile countries appreciate the relevance of the multilateral rules-based trading system as a mechanism for peacebuilding through promoting good governance and the rule of law, reducing poverty and achieving economic growth.

Conclusion

The bottom line: A new edition of a book on the WTO and the SDGs should spell out how all 17 goals either are or can be served by the WTO and its agreements. But more than a book, we need WTO Members to engage and conclude negotiations that have a direct impact on achieving the SDGs. I have already spoken about the negotiations to discipline fisheries subsidies, the specific bodog poker review goal of SDG 14.6 on a result on that subject would speak volumes, and you can all push for its successful conclusion.

Trade is one of the best anti-poverty tools in history. By boosting economic growth, trade was a catalyst for reaching the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty in half – well ahead of the 2015 deadline.

Trade must play its full part in achieving the 2030 sustainable development goals. To help deliver on these goals and maximize the power of trade in tackling poverty and hunger, making our economies more sustainable and inclusive, WTO Members must put sustainable development at the core of WTO reform efforts. A reform process that results in tangible progress in fully aligning trade and sustainability would be a major contribution the WTO could make to advancing the issues we are discussing here today.

To read the original blog post, please click here.

Ambassador Alan Wm. Wolff is Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

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Rachel Accorsi — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 15:15:15 +0000

Buoyed by a rebounding economy as the U.S. and Europe continue to struggle with containing the coronavirus, China reported shipments of $268 billion, a stunning 21.1% increase from November 2019, almost twice the year-on-year gain in October. Analysts had predicted similar growth this past month.

China’s 2020 boom in exports is beyond a statistical blip, according to analysis by Trade Data Monitor, the world’s top source of export and import statistics. The country is now exporting more goods per month in dollar value than any country in global economic history.

The bonanza is driven by the Covid-19 pandemic. As hundreds of millions of people in the world’s richest economies migrate their work home from the office, they are doing so with China-made computers, phone, routers and data storage units. Overall, exports of high-tech products leapt 21.1% to $86.1 billion.

Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and public health officials are buying medical equipment they need, such as ventilators, face masks, and now many key ingredients for mass-produced vaccines, from China. Exports of medical devices increased 38.4% to $1.6 billion.

As the rest of the world has had to shut down major sectors of the economy to cope with Covid-19, China has kept its factories open since the spring. China’s top customer: the U.S., which imported $52 billion of goods, up 45.7% from November 2019.

To be sure, China’s hot streak won’t last forever. Markets will get saturated. Countries will slow down their purchases of medical supplies as populations get vaccinated. The yuan has been appreciated in value for much of the decade. Chinese wages have been rising, pushing parts of the supply chains toward other Asian countries, especially Vietnam. China’s widening trade gap will continue to trigger protectionism and tariffs. And the rest of the world will get back to work.

But for now, China is the only rich economy expected to grow in 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund. China’s manufacturing index has been robust, indicating that factories are humming. By comparison, U.S. exports have fallen almost 15% in the first 10 months of 2020. Japan’s are down 11.7%.

Meanwhile, China has blown through all the records, notching its sixth straight month of growth. Thanks to exports, China now appears almost certain to reach its goal of becoming the world’s biggest economy by 2030 ahead of schedule.

The change in consumer habits isn’t just visible in sales of high-tech products. People are buying less stuff they need to move around—and simply more they need to stay at home. Shipments of bags and containers fell 8.3% to $2.1 billion, and shoes, boots and footwear declined 8.8% to $3.2 billion, while China exported $6.9 billion of furniture, up 42.7% from the same month in 2019.

In high-tech goods, China isn’t just exporting finished products. Sales to other countries of integrated circuits grew 26.4% to $11.5 billion.

Economists have looked to Chinese consumers to pick up some of the slackening demand, but imports are not keeping pace with exports. Imports increased 4.5% year-on-year in November, furthering widening China’s massive trade surplus with the rest of the world, to $75.4 billion, around double the number the year before, and up from $58.4 billion in October 2020.

The U.S. isn’t the only country ramping up imports of Chinese goods. Exports to the European Union increased 25.5% to $37.5 billion, shipments to India totaled $7.1 billion, up 20.2% from the same period in 2019, and exports to Latin America totaled $16.2 billion, up 29.3% from November 2019.

To read the original blog post, please click here.

John W. Miller is TDM’s Chief Economic Analyst, in charge of writing TDM Insights, a newsletter analyzing key issues through trade statistics.

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Rachel Accorsi — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 13:26:58 +0000

On November 27, 2020, the United States filed two documents with the WTO’s Committee on Government Procurement. Each proposed modifications to Annex 1 of the U.S. schedule of commitments under the GPA dealing with central government agency/entity procurements. Proposed modification to Appendix 1 of the United States under the 1994 Agreement on Government Procurement, GPA/MOD/USA/17; Proposed modification to Appendix 1 of the United States under the Revised Agreement on Government Procurement, GPA/MOD/USA/18. As the title of the submission indicates, the U.S. proposed modifications pertain to Annex 1 commitments of the U.S. which are central government commitments only. Thus, for the 1994 Agreement, Annexes 2-5 are not in play with Annex 2 dealing with sub-central government entities being the relevant other major Annex (Annex 1: central government entities; Annex 2: sub-central government entities; Annex 3: other entities; Annex 4: services; Annex 5: construction services). On the revised Agreement there are seven Annexes, of which only Annex 1 on center government entities is covered by the U.S. proposed modification (Annex 1: central government entities; Annex 2: sub-central government entities; Annex 3: other entities; Annex 4: goods; Annex 5: services; Annex 6: construction services; Annex 7: general notes).

While both U.S. proposed modification documents are presently restricted (and hence not available to the public), the notices constitute USTR following the requirements of Executive Order 13944 of August 6, 2020 to take steps within 30 days after the Food and Drug Administration had published its list of drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients that are essential. See Executive Order 13944 of August 6, 2020, Combating Public Health Emergencies and Strengthening National Security by Ensuring Essential Medicines, Medical Counter- measures, and Critical Inputs Are Made in the United States, 85 Fed. Reg. 49,929 – 49-934 (August 14, 2020). USTR’s obligations extend beyond the WTO and include any trade agreements with government procurement commitments. But for purposes of this post, I am focusing just on the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (1994 and Revised). The Executive Order is embedded below but is an effort to address perceived supply chain problems and “over reliance” on imported product including active pharmaceutical ingredients (“APIs”).

2020-18012

While the United States is a major pharmaceutical research and development country, U.S. pharmaceutical companies have moved much API production offshore as well as finished product production. China and India are the largest suppliers of APIs to the United States. With the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump Administration has pursued efforts to onshore manufacturing of essential medical products including through the Executive Order 13944. See, e.g., Datex, Onshoring U.S. Pharmaceutical Manufacturing:COVID-19, Congress and Puerto Rico Pharma Hub, Ideas for returning pharmaceutical manufacturing to the U.S., https://www.datexcorp.com/onshoring-u-s-pharmaceutical-manufacturing-covid-19-congress-and-puerto-rico-pharma-hub/; Fierce Pharma, June 3, 2020, U.S. seeks to onshore drug production in response to COVID-19. Is pharma even interested?, https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/pharma-pushes-back-u-s-legislation-to-bring-drug-manufacturing-stateside; Policy & Medicine, August 26, 2020, Trump Signs Executive Order Regarding Medical Supply Chain, https://www.policymed.com/2020/09/trump-signs-executive-order-regarding-medical-supply-chain.html.

While onshoring is not supported by pharmaceutical companies and has been cited as not likely cost-effective or necessary to address the current or future pandemics, to date both the Trump Administration and President-elect Biden have expressed support for at least some onshoring to ensure greater availability of medicines and materials. See, e.g., S&P Global Market Intelligence, October 15, 2020, US drug onshoring is more complex than Trump, Biden political pitches –experts, https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/us-drug-onshoring-is-more-complex-than-trump-biden-political-pitches-8211-experts-60714320.

Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff in a statement to the World Economic Forum on November 12, 2020 reviewed some of the reasons for WTO Members not to put excessive reliance on onshoring and to use supply chains and strengthen them. See WTO, 12 November 2020, DDG Wolff calls for new initiatives to cut tariffs on medical supplies and equipment, https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news20_e/ddgaw_12nov20_e.htm.

“On the feasibility of localization

“Trade this year has proved to be essential to meet the world’s needs for medical supplies. National stockpiles proved inadequate. Investment was only part of the answer.

“Trade played a critical role in meeting the vastly increased demand for medical goods and medicines. WTO data show that trade in personal protective equipment (PPE) more than doubled from May 2019 to May 2020. It was a key factor in creating supply resilience, even though some shortages persist even in advanced economies.

“Purely domestic supply chains would have been unable to meet a surge in demand of the suddenness and magnitude experienced. Export controls may have exacerbated the problems, even though many have been subsequently rolled back.

“It appears that the shock persisted in policymakers’ minds in many countries, following initial calls for re-shoring manufacturing production for key products.

“Supporters of localization tend to portray it as risk-free. This is wrong. Concentrating industry at home might insulate it from turbulence elsewhere, but the domestic sources of supplies are more vulnerable to localized disruptions, such as from a hurricane or an outbreak of disease. In addition, the economics dictate that complete self-sufficiency is unworkable for any country, rich or poor.

“Deep and diversified international markets offer the most promising and cost-effective path to supply resilience. But its viability will hinge on whether countries and their citizens feel that international markets can be trusted in a crisis

“On reliance on global supply chains

“Economics will be the key determinant of the resilience of international supply chain.

“If countries can be confident that they will be able to rely on international markets for imports when they need them, they will have less reason to restrict exports.

“The preliminary evidence suggests that moves to diversify supply chains have primarily seen production shift from one low-cost country to another.

“Increasingly sophisticated machines have already been diminishing the importance of labor cost arbitrage in the choice of manufacturing location.

“Productivity will be a key determinant of which firms are able to go compete internationally.

“A few years ago, the Brookings Institution looked at five key determinants of the manufacturing environment: 1) overall policies and regulations; 2) tax policy; 3) energy, transportation, and health costs; 4) workforce quality; and 5) infrastructure and innovation. It is instructive that when the study made recommendations for how to improve the manufacturing environment, at the top of their list was political and economic predictability, including open trade policies.

“On shoring and near-shoring have to obey these economic rules if they are going to play an increasing role in national choices.”

U.S. commitments in Annex 1 of the 1994 GPA and the Revised GPA

The U.S. commitments under the GPA include purchases by the Departments of Health and Human Services and of Defense. The two sets of Annex 1 obligations (1994 GPA; revised GPA) are embedded below.

usa1 rev_usa1e

The Food and Drug Administration list of essential pharmaceutical and other medical products is embedded below and constitutes what is presumably being proposed for withdrawal from coverage of the GPA 1994 and revised GPA in the U.S. Annex coverage. It is a long list of products, if, as assumed, it is the FDA list that has been put forward.

20201030_EssentialMedicinesList_508

Modification of Annexes under the WTO 1994 GPA and under the WTO revised GPA

While the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement envisions expanded coverage over time by signatories, both the original agreement and the revised agreement provide for possible modifications of the Agreement with rebalancing of benefits for other countries or retaliation where action is taken without rebalancing. The 1994 Agreement in Article XXIV:6 provides for rectifications and modifications of commitments:

“Article XXIV: Final Provisions

* * *

“6. Rectifications or Modifications

“(a) Rectifications, transfers of an entity from one Annex to another or, in exceptional cases, other modifications relating to Appendices I through IV shall be notified to the Committee, along with information as to the likely consequences of the change for the mutually agreed coverage provided in this Agreement. If the rectifications, transfers or other modifications are of a purely formal or minor nature, they shall become effective provided there is no objection within 30 days. In other cases, the Chairman of the Committee shall promptly convene a meeting of the Committee. The Committee shall consider the proposal and any claim for compensatory adjustments, with a view to maintaining a balance of rights and obligations and a comparable level of mutually agreed coverage provided in this Agreement prior to such notification. In the event of agreement not being reached, the matter may be pursued in accordance with the provisions contained in Article XXII.

“(b) Where a Party wishes, in exercise of its rights, to withdraw an entity from Appendix I on the grounds that government control or influence over it has been effectively eliminated, that Party shall notify the Committee. Such modification shall become effective the day after the end of the following meeting of the Committee, provided that the meeting is no sooner than 30 days from the date of notification and no objection has been made. In the event of an objection, the matter may be pursued in accordance with the procedures on consultations and dispute settlement contained in Article XXII. In considering the proposed modification to Appendix I and any consequential compensatory adjustment, allowance shall be made for the market-opening effects of the removal of government control or influence.”

The revised Agreement has more detailed provisions for modifications and rectifications contained in Article XIX:

“Article XIX — Modifications and Rectifications to Coverage Notification of Proposed Modification

“1. A Party shall notify the Committee of any proposed rectification, transfer of an entity from one annex to another, withdrawal of an entity or other modification of its annexes to Appendix I (any of which is hereinafter referred to as ‘modification’). The Party proposing the modification (hereinafter referred to as ‘modifying Party’) shall include in the notification:

“a. for any proposed withdrawal of an entity from its annexes to Appendix I in exercise of its rights on the grounds that government control or influence over the entity’s covered procurement has been effectively eliminated, evidence of such elimination; or

“b. for any other proposed modification, information as to the likely consequences of the change for the mutually agreed coverage provided for in this Agreement.

“Objection to Notification

“2. Any Party whose rights under this Agreement may be affected by a proposed modification notified under paragraph 1 may notify the Committee of any objection to the proposed modification. Such objections shall be made within 45 days from the date of the circulation to the Parties of the notification, and shall set out reasons for the objection.

“Consultations

“3. The modifying Party and any Party making an objection (hereinafter referred to as “objecting Party”) shall make every attempt to resolve the objection through consultations. In such consultations, the modifying and objecting Parties shall consider the proposed modification:

“a. in the case of a notification under paragraph 1(a), in accordance with any indicative criteria adopted pursuant to paragraph 8(b), indicating the effective elimination of government control or influence over an entity’s covered procurement; and

“b. in the case of a notification under paragraph 1(b), in accordance with any criteria adopted pursuant to paragraph 8(c), relating to the level of compensatory adjustments to be offered for modifications, with a view to maintaining a balance of rights and obligations and a comparable level of mutually agreed coverage provided in this Agreement.

“Revised Modification

“4. Where the modifying Party and any objecting Party resolve the objection through consultations, and the modifying Party revises its proposed modification as a result of those consultations, the modifying Party shall notify the Committee in accordance with paragraph 1,and any such revised modification shall only be effective after fulfilling the requirements of this Article.

“Implementation of Modifications

“5. A proposed modification shall become effective only where:

“a. no Party submits to the Committee a written objection to the proposed modification within 45 days from the date of circulation of the notification of the proposed modification under paragraph 1;

“b. all objecting Parties have notified the Committee that they withdraw their objections to the proposed modification; or

“c. 150 days from the date of circulation of the notification of the proposed modification under paragraph 1 have elapsed, and the modifying Party has informed the Committee in writing of its intention to implement the modification.

“Withdrawal of Substantially Equivalent Coverage

“6. Where a modification becomes effective pursuant to paragraph 5(c), any objecting Party may withdraw substantially equivalent coverage. Notwithstanding Article IV:1(b), a withdrawal pursuant to this paragraph may be implemented solely with respect to the modifying Party. Any objecting Party shall inform the Committee in writing of any such withdrawal at least 30 days before the withdrawal becomes effective. A withdrawal pursuant to this paragraph shall be consistent with any criteria relating to the level of compensatory adjustment adopted by the Committee pursuant to paragraph 8(c).

“Arbitration Procedures to Facilitate Resolution of Objections

“7. Where the Committee has adopted arbitration procedures to facilitate the resolution of objections pursuant to paragraph 8, a modifying or any objecting Party may invoke the arbitration procedures within 120 days of circulation of the notification of the proposed modification:

“a. Where no Party has invoked the arbitration procedures within the time-period:

“i. notwithstanding paragraph 5(c), the proposed modification shall become effective where 130 days from the date of circulation of the notification of the proposed modification under paragraph 1 have elapsed, and the modifying Party has informed the Committee in writing of its intention to implement the modification; and

“ii. no objecting Party may withdraw coverage pursuant to paragraph 6.

“b. Where a modifying Party or objecting Party has invoked the arbitration procedures:

“i. notwithstanding paragraph 5(c), the proposed modification shall not become effective before the completion of the arbitration procedures;

“ii. any objecting Party that intends to enforce a right to compensation, or to withdraw substantially equivalent coverage pursuant to paragraph 6, shall participate in the arbitration proceedings;

“iii. a modifying Party should comply with the results of the arbitration procedures in making any modification effective pursuant to paragraph 5(c); and

“iv. where a modifying Party does not comply with the results of the arbitration procedures in making any modification effective pursuant to paragraph 5(c), any objecting Party may withdraw substantially equivalent coverage pursuant to paragraph 6, provided that any such withdrawal is consistent with the result of the arbitration procedures.

“Committee Responsibilities

“8. The Committee shall adopt:

“a. arbitration procedures to facilitate resolution of objections under paragraph 2;

“b. indicative criteria that demonstrate the effective elimination of government control or influence over an entity’s covered procurement; and

“c. criteria for determining the level of compensatory adjustment to be offered for modifications made pursuant to paragraph 1(b) and of substantially equivalent coverage under paragraph 6.”

Likely consultations with trading partners will extend into Biden Administration

Considering the list of other GPA signatories, it is certain that a number of signatories will seek compensation from the United States or will pursue retaliation if the U.S. proposed modifications take effect. Assuming a desire by one or more signatories to seek rebalancing and/or to pursue retaliation, the timing of implementation of the modifications appear to vary based on the relevant Agreement but will almost certain extend into the Biden Administration after January 20.

Thus, while the incoming Biden Administration intends to have its focus on domestic challenges in the early part of its first term, the modification of U.S. WTO GPA commitments is another example of an important trade issue that will require focus in the early days of the new Administration.

Conclusion

During the COVID-19 pandemic there has been concern both within the Trump Administration and in the U.S. Congress about the shortages of personal protective equipment and the high reliance on offshore production of APIs and essential medicines for the treatment of patients with COVID-19 in the United States. The concern on domestic capabilities is held by both Republicans and Democrats and has been identified as an issue of importance to the incoming Biden Administration. While there is opposition from the pharmaceutical companies and certainly concerns from economists and some policy professionals about over reliance on onshoring, the United States has been taking some actions to encourage onshoring. The Executive Order 13944 addresses U.S. government procurement of essential medicines and other medical goods.

Action last week by USTR in submitting proposed modifications to its Annex 1 commitments under the 1994 GPA and the revised GPA is a necessary step to comply with WTO obligations if a change in coverage is to occur. Because of the likely actions of trading partners in the coming weeks and months, the Biden Administration, if it chooses to move forward with the Trump Administration initiative, will face an important WTO task in the early months of the new Administration to negotiate a rebalancing of commitments or face retaliation by WTO GPA partners. Similar obligations and needs will be present in FTAs that include government procurement commitments as well. This increases the importance for the Biden Administration to fill the USTR posts early as well.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, bodog poker review|Most Popular_Congressional

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Rachel Accorsi — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 19:51:38 +0000

In 2000 the U.S. Congress established the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) to “monitor and report on the national security implications of the U.S.-China economic relationship.” 2020 REPORT TO CONGRESS of the U.S.-CHINA ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REVIEW COMMISSION, December 2020, at 27, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/2020_Annual_Report_to_Congress.pdf. The annual report reviews the work undertaken by the USCC during the year and provides recommendations to the U.S. Congress to address matters viewed as of critical importance by the USCC. The report this year is another excellent review of concerns from the U.S. perspective of the directions China is pursuing and the challenges those directions pose to U.S. interests and the global order that has maintained relative peace and stability for the last seventy years. The issues and concerns raised highlight the likely challenges for WTO Members in finding a path forward to reforming the organization and updating the rules to ensure a global trading system that actually works for all trading nations. Below are copied two segments of the report — the Introduction (pages 27-30) and what the USCC considers the 10 key recommendations to Congress (pages 22-25). Because the USCC looks at both economic and security issues, the introduction provides the USCC’s views of the security implications of Chinese actions as well as the economic concerns raised by Chinese government policies. Similarly, many of the key recommendations are security related versus purely economic-centered.

“INTRODUCTION

“In 2000, Congress established this Commission to monitor and report on the national security implications of the U.S.-China economic relationship. Over the years, we have tracked the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) accountability to its global commitments, including those made in its accession to the World Trade Organization. Two decades later, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) selectively adheres to its global economic, trade, and political obligations and has abandoned any concern for international opinion. Now the CCP envisions itself atop a new hierarchical global order in which the world acquiesces to China’s worldview while supplying it with markets, capital, resources, and talent.

“The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has focused public attention on China, but the PRC’s ambitions are neither new nor secret. For decades, the CCP has made its ambitions clear through industrial policy and planning documents, leadership speeches, and military directives. Under General Secretary Xi Jinping, however, the CCP is aggressively asserting its interests both domestically and globally.

“In the past, the CCP focused its attempts at economic dominance on legacy sectors of steel, aluminum, and transportation, among others. Its current goals are to dominate the world’s newest and most cutting-edge industries, including biotechnology, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and clean energy. Though the focus bodog casino of China’s industrial policies is changing, the government’s strategy and objectives retain the same mercantilist and coercive tools: compelling foreign entrants to transfer technology to their domestic competitors for limited market access, lavishing generous subsidies on state-owned enterprises and domestic national champions, and leveraging illicit methods, including cyber-enabled theft, to obtain valuable intellectual property and mountains of data.

“China’s security laws threaten the arrest of anyone who criticizes China, its leaders, or its policies. This threat now extends to Americans inside China as well as those who live in or travel to countries that have an extradition treaty with China. Foreign journalists live in fear of detention or expulsion.

“The CCP claims to protect the interests of the Chinese people. Its true purpose, however, is to protect its own existence and grow its power, no matter the costs. Party leaders judge any sign of criticism to be too great a risk to CCP rule. The CCP’s response is harsh and swift whether reacting to the single voice of a doctor raising health alarms about the emergence of COVID-19, to internal criticism, or to millions of peaceful prodemocracy demonstrators in Hong Kong. This year, the CCP undertook new levels of effort to silence critics and prevent the flow of information.

“The CCP’s actions in Hong Kong show the Party’s lack of tolerance for any sign of opposition to its interests and its lack of intent to honor its international commitments. Acting with swiftness and brutality, the CCP imposed draconian restrictions in Hong Kong, bypassing citizens’ rights, the local government, and the legislature with a law drafted and directed by Beijing. Moving mainland authorities into Hong Kong, the CCP has arrested hundreds and threatened thousands of citizens who have simply demanded China honor its pledge to guarantee Hong Kong a ‘high degree of autonomy’ in its legal, social, and economic life. That the CCP’s brazen assertion of power violated a legally binding treaty registered with the UN did not constrain its actions. Responding to global criticism, the head of China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office affirmed the new CCP approach, replying, ‘The era when the Chinese cared what others thought and looked up to others is in the past, never to return.’

“From its mismanagement of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan to its imposition of full and direct authoritarian rule in Hong Kong and continued militarization of the South China Sea, the PRC has repeatedly violated its own pledges and international obligations. Enabled by its economic strength, China’s disregard for international rules and norms or censure from the international community raises grave concerns over future CCP policy choices and actions. The prospect is growing that the CCP will use military or other coercive means to forcibly absorb Taiwan. Taiwan’s thriving democracy and civil society stand as the ultimate rebuke to the CCP’s claim that Chinese people are not suited for democracy.

“As the CCP accelerates its aggressive pursuit of global power and leadership, this Report shows that the PRC considers its relationships with African countries to be a blueprint for building its new, Sinocentric world order. The PRC’s dominance of extractive industries on the African continent that are critical for technology and defense, combined with its influence over media and political parties, are key elements of a multidimensional approach it is now advancing in other regions, including Latin America and the Caribbean.

“China’s activities in Africa serve as the template for projecting power and influence far from China’s shores. Such activities include the establishment of a military base it calls a ‘logistics facility’ in Djibouti, the use of Chinese troops involved in peacekeeping operations in violation of the spirit if not the letter of its UN obligations, and political opportunism and interference enabled by predatory economic practices. Chinese companies’ construction of potentially dual-use ports and telecommunications networks along the ever-expanding Belt and Road Initiative are representative of the mutually reinforcing nature of its military-civil fusion strategy and expansionist goals.

“Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army is evolving into a formidable and increasingly modern force. It augments robust force projection capabilities in East and Southeast Asia with routine operations in the Indian Ocean, initial forays into the South Atlantic, and the asymmetric capability to project power globally in the space and cyber domains. The CCP employs its armed forces as a coercive tool during peacetime, carrying out large-scale intimidation exercises around Taiwan and in the South China Sea. This year, it provoked the first deadly clash on the China-India border in nearly half a century.

“China’s rising aggression has not gone unnoticed. Policymakers, businesses, civil society leaders, and citizens around the world have been awakened to the ambitions and tactics of the CCP. Governments in developed and developing countries alike have become more cautious about accepting China’s coercive terms of trade, technology products, and services. No trend exemplifies this shift in opinion better than rising restrictions in many countries limiting access to 5G infrastructure for Chinese companies beholden to the CCP by its national security laws.

“In addition to reporting on the current state of the U.S.-China relationship, the Commission has focused on new theaters and emerging dimensions of the threat to U.S. interests posed by CCP policy choices. This year, we examined how the CCP advances its interests in new domains of competition. In international organizations, both those falling under the UN umbrella and those bringing together regional partners, China is positioning trusted officials, whether nationals of the PRC or others vulnerable to Chinese influence, in key leadership posts. Long dependent on foreign technology, China is working to influence international technical standards for emerging technologies to promote Chinese companies and technologies as the basis for new global standards. The cumulative effect of China’s influence in these organizations was on full display this year when the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) publicly praised Beijing’s transparency and early response to the COVID-19 outbreak, despite the extreme measures Beijing took to lock down information while allowing infected persons to travel domestically and internationally, seeding a global pandemic. At the same time, the WHO, at Beijing’s behest, blocked Taiwan from meaningful participation in the global pandemic response despite Taiwan’s early and open communication and model epidemic control and prevention efforts.

“While General Secretary Xi and the ruling CCP have sought to project an image of confidence, their tone-deaf response to global criticism suggests the possible hazards ahead. By suppressing all criticism and dissent, General Secretary Xi has created a dangerous echo chamber leaving China’s government vulnerable to miscalculation. The United States and its allies and partners cannot afford, however, to simply wait out the PRC’s current rulers with a false hope of reform or policy change. The CCP’s repression of the Chinese people, and especially the atrocities it has committed against ethnic Uyghur and Tibetan minorities, may constitute crimes against humanity, even genocide. Concern about the Party’s abusive treatment of ethnic Mongolians is also rising.

“The CCP has launched determined and systematic efforts to hollow out global governance institutions, suppress internal opposition, subjugate free peoples in Hong Kong and around China’s periphery, dominate global economic resources, and project military power. These efforts threaten vital interests of the United States and the security and vitality of an increasing number of countries around the globe.

“Left unchecked, the PRC will continue building a new global order anathema to the interests and values that have underpinned unprecedented economic growth and stability among nations in the post-Cold War era. The past 20 years are littered with the CCP’s broken promises. In China’s intended new order, there is little reason to believe CCP promises of ‘win-win’ solutions, mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence. A clear understanding of the CCP’s adversarial national security and economic ambitions is essential as U.S. and allied leaders develop the policies and programs that will define the conditions of global freedom and shape our future.”

“THE COMMISSION’S KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

“The Commission considers 10 of its 19 recommendations to Congress to be of particular significance. The complete list of recommendations appears at the Report’s Conclusion on page 535.

“1. Congress adopt the principle of reciprocity as foundational in all legislation bearing on U.S.-China relations. Issues to be considered in applying this principle should include but are not limited to the following:

“• The ability of journalists and online media to operate without undue restriction;

“• The ability of nongovernmental organizations to conduct meaningful engagement with civil society;

“• Access to information, including but not limited to financial and research data;

“• Access for social media and mobile apps from U.S. companies;

“• Access for diplomatic personnel, including but not limited to diplomats’ freedom of travel and ability to meaningfully exchange views with the host country public; and

“• Market access and regulatory parity, including but not limited to companies’ ability to participate in trade, investment, and financial market transactions, cross-border capital transfer, and protections of intellectual property.

“2. Congress expand the authority of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to monitor and take foreign government subsidies into account in premerger notification processes.

“• The FTC shall develop a process to determine to what extent proposed transactions are facilitated by the support of foreign government subsidies.

“• The definition of foreign government subsidies shall encompass direct subsidies, grants, loans, below-market loans, loan guarantees, tax concessions, governmental procurement policies, and other forms of government support.

“• Companies operating in the United States that benefit from the financial support of a foreign government must provide the FTC with a detailed accounting of these subsidies when undergoing FTC premerger procedures.

“• If the FTC finds foreign subsidies have facilitated the transaction, the FTC can either propose a modification to remedy the distortion or prohibit the transaction under Section 7 of the Clayton Act, which prohibits mergers and acquisitions where the effect ‘may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.’

“3. Congress direct the U.S. Department of State to produce an annual report detailing China’s actions in the United Nations and its subordinate agencies that subvert the principles and purposes of the United Nations. Such a report would at a minimum document the following:

“• China’s actions violating United Nations treaties to which it is a party;

“• China’s actions to influence the votes of United Nations members, including through coercive means;

“• China’s actions to nominate or support candidates for United Nations leadership positions that do not adhere to United Nations standards for impartiality or are subject to the influence of the Chinese government;

“• Actions by nationals of the People’s Republic of China and others currently holding United Nations leadership positions that appear to support the interests of the Chinese government in violation of United Nations impartiality standards;

“• Actions by nationals of the People’s Republic of China serving in functional positions in United Nations organizations impacting hiring practices, internal policies, and other functions that appear to support the interests of the Chinese government in violation of United Nations impartiality standards;

“• Actions by Chinese military and support personnel engaged in United Nations peacekeeping operations that are inconsistent with the principles governing these missions, including China’s deployment of these personnel to protect its economic interests and improve the power projection capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army; and

“• The number and positions of United States personnel employed by the United Nations and its agencies.

“4. Congress hold hearings to consider the creation of an interagency executive Committee on Technical Standards that would be responsible for coordinating U.S. government policy and priorities on international standards. This Committee would consist of high-level political appointees from executive departments with
equities relating to international technical standards, including the Department of Commerce, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and other agencies or government stakeholders with relevant jurisdiction. The Committee’s mandate would be to ensure common purpose and coordination within the executive branch on international standards. Specifically, the Committee would:

“• Identify the technical standards with the greatest potential impact on American national security and economic competitiveness;

“• Coordinate government efforts relating to those standards;

“• Act as a liaison between government, academia, and the private sector to coordinate and enhance joint efforts in relation to standards;

“• Manage outreach to counterpart agencies among U.S. allies and partners;

“• Set funding priorities and recommendations to Congress; and

“• Produce annual reports to Congress on the status of technical standards issues and their impact on U.S. national security and economic competitiveness.

“5. Congress consider establishing a ‘Manhattan Project’-like effort to ensure that the U.S. public has access to safe and secure supplies of critical lifesaving and life-sustaining drugs and medical equipment, and to ensure that these supplies are available from domestic sources or, where necessary, trusted allies. Such a project would supplement the recommendation the Commission made in its 2019 Annual Report that Congress hold hearings with a view toward enacting legislation requiring the U.S. government to procure medicines only from U.S. production facilities or from facilities that have been certified compliant with U.S. standards.

“6. Congress enact legislation establishing a China Economic Data Coordination Center (CEDCC) at the Bureau of Economic Analysis at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Center would be mandated to collect and synthesize official and unofficial Chinese economic data on developments in China’s financial markets
and U.S. exposure to risks and vulnerabilities in China’s financial system, including:

“• Data on baseline economic statistics (e.g., gross domestic product [GDP]) and other indicators of economic health;

“• Data on national and local government debt;

“• Data on nonperforming loan amounts;

“• Data on the composition of shadow banking assets;

“• Data on the composition of China’s foreign exchange reserves; and

“• Data on bank loan interest rates.

“7. Congress direct the Administration, when sanctioning an entity in the People’s Republic of China for actions contrary to the economic and national security interests of the United States or for violations of human rights, to also sanction the parent entity.

“8. Congress consider enacting legislation to make the Director of the American Institute in Taiwan a presidential nomination subject to the advice and consent of the United States Senate.

“9. Congress amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to clarify that association with a foreign government’s technology transfer programs may be considered grounds to deny a nonimmigrant
visa if the foreign government in question is deemed a strategic competitor of the United States, or if the applicant has engaged in violations of U.S. laws relating to espionage, sabotage, or export controls. Association with a foreign government’s technology transfer programs can include any of the following:

“• Participation in a foreign government-sponsored program designed to incentivize participants to transfer fundamental research to a foreign country via a talent recruitment program or in a foreign government-sponsored startup competition;

“• Acceptance of a government scholarship that requires recipients to study specific strategic scientific and technological fields, to return to the foreign country for a government work requirement after the scholarship term ends, or facilitates coordination with talent programs;

“• Association with a university or a department of a university that the U.S. government has designated as a participant in the foreign government’s military-civil fusion efforts; or

“• Status (current or past) as a scientist, technician, or officer for a foreign military, if the applicant does not disclose such information when applying for a visa.

“10. Congress direct the Administration to identify and remove barriers to receiving United States visas for Hong Kong residents attempting to exit Hong Kong for fear of political persecution.”

Recommendations from the USCC to Congress are just that. Congress may or may not take one or more of the recommendations into account in legislative activity in the coming year or years. It is also not the case that the recommendations will necessarily receive support from the incoming Biden Administration. But the report and recommendations provide background research on areas of actual or potential conflict between the United States and China and, as such, will be of interest to government and non-government actors.

Most of the recommendations deal with activities not trade related and even those that are trade related are not necessarily covered by the WTO’s set of existing agreements or current topics of ongoing negotiation. The need for secure supply lines for medical goods and medicines is a topic examined by Congress this year and likely to be of significant interest to the coming Administration. Access to medical goods and medicines is an issue of great interest to WTO Members generally and certainly during the pandemic. Onshoring, while opposed by some as potentially cost ineffective, is not necessarily in conflict with access to medical goods and medicines.

What is clear from the report and recommendations is that there are major differences between the United States and China that point to continued significant bilateral tensions moving forward even if both nations look for areas of cooperation and collaboration. Such tensions suggest great difficulties ahead in achieving meaningful reform within the WTO where many important issues for the United States (and others) will be likely blocked by China. May we live in interesting times.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, bodog poker review|Most Popular_Congressional

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Rachel Accorsi — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 16:04:38 +0000

The most recent surge in COVID-19 cases (up from 3.57 million cases over a fourteen day period in early August to over 5 million for fourteen days on October 22 to over 8 million new cases for fourteen days on November 17), seems to have peaked on November 26 with 8,296,264 new cases over fourteen days and has been slowly receding for the last three days, down to 8,142,629 new cases during the period November 16-29. Total cases since the end of December 2019 now stand at 54,110,061 as of November 29 according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) publication “COVID-19 situation update worldwide, as of 29 November 2020”.

The World Health Organization puts out a publication that tracks cases and deaths on a weekly basis. COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update (data as of 22 November). While it breaks countries and territories into different configuarations that the ECDC, the publication shows new cases in the period November 16-22 declining 6% in Europe and in South East Asia while increasing 11% in the Americas, 5% in the Eastern Mediterranean, 15% in Africa and 9% in the Western Pacific. Because of the large spike in cases in the September – November period in many parts of the world, deaths in the November 16-22 period increased in all regions — up 10% in Europe, 15% in the Americas, 4% in South-East Asia, 10% in the Eastern Mediterranean, 30% in Africa and 1% in the Western Pacific. The latest report is embedded below.

20201124_Weekly_Epi_Update_15

The graphs in the WHO publication show by region the trajectory of new cases and deaths over time. The chart showing aggregate data show a flattening of total new cases in the last weeks of November while the number of deaths globally are sharply increasing.

The WHO Africa region peaked in the summer and has declined until the last few weeks when there has been some increase in both cases and deaths.

The Americas saw a peak in both new cases and deaths in the July period with some declines in new cases until the second half of September when the current surge started and accelerated in November. Deaths declined until early October before starting to grow again.

The Eastern Mediterranean peaked in May-June for both cases and deaths, declined through August/September and have surged to new heights with continued upward trajectory as of November 22.

The WTO European Region had an early surge of cases and deaths in the March-April period. Deaths receded sharply through August. While new cases have increased since summer, there was a massive increase in the September – end of October period in new cases and rising deaths through November.

The WHO South-East Asia region saw a huge increase in cases and deaths in the May-August period, peaking in early September and declining since then. Much of the data for the region reflect activity in India.

The Western Pacific Region has had several peaks in terms of deaths and in new cases, though the numbers are the lowest of any WHO region. The latest peak in new cases was in early August with some increase in the October-November period. Deaths last peaked in early September and have declined through November.

The United States

Turning back to the ECDC data, the United States continues to have more confirmed cases (13,246,651) than any other nation and more confirmed deaths from COVID-19 (266,063) than any other nation. The United States is also still experiencing a surge in new cases and rising deaths. October 31 was the first day that ECDC data show the U.S. recording 100,000 new cases in a single day. Since November 5, the U.S. has had more than 100,000 new cases every day up to November 29. It is the only country to record one million new cases in a week and the only country to record two million new cases in fourteen days. For the last fourteen days, the U.S. recorded 2,341,760 new cases. The U.S., which accounts for 4.3% of the global population, accounts for 21.27% of all COVID-19 cases that have been reported since December 2019 and accounted for 28.76% of new cases in the last two weeks. The rate of increase remains high for the United States — up 31.67% from the 1,778,530 new cases in the two weeks ending November 15. There are concerns that the number of new cases will continue to increase into the new year based on the high rate of infections in many parts of the country, major potential spreading events around holidays in November (Thanksgiving) and December, and limited compliance with basic requirements for limiting the spread of the virus.

The number of deaths from COVID-19 that the U.S. accounts for has declined from roughly 20% to 18.30% as of November 29. In the last two week, while the U.S. has the largest number of deaths in the two weeks, the percent of total deaths accounted for by the U.S. in the November 16-29 period was 14.65%. However, many cities, communities and even states are at or nearing the limits of the health care capacity with hospitalizations now about 90,000, limits on health care professionals with the surging cases and some challenges on personal protective equipment. Thus, models used by the government projects a continued rise in the number of deaths in the coming months.

While the first vaccine could receive emergency approval for distribution in the U.S. as early as December 10, and the U.S. could have two or three vaccines in distribution in early 2021, the United States will unfortunately likely be a major part of the continued high rate of infections and deaths well into 2021.

Europe

While Europe had faced early challenges in a number of western European countries in February-April and very high death rates in a number of countries, the second wave of cases following the relaxation of restrictions in time for summer vacations accounted for the vast majority of the incrase in new cases during the October and early November time period. In earlier posts, I showed that Europe and the U.S. accounted for nearly all of the increase from 5 million new cases in the two weeks ending October 22 to the more than 8 million new cases in the two weeks ending November 17. See November 17, 2020, New COVID-19 cases over a fourteen day period continue to soar past eight million, up from five million on October 22, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/11/17/new-covid-19-cases-over-a-fourteen-day-period-continue-to-soar-past-eight-million-up-from-five-million-on-october-22/

While some of the major countries, including France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and others have seen significant reductions in the number of new cases in recent weeks from the extraordinary figures recorded in late October, early November, numbers remain very high for a number of countries including Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania and Luxembourg — all of whom had new cases/100,000 population in the last fourteen days that were higher than the United States.

Because deaths lag new cases by a number of weeks, it is perhaps less surprising that much of Europe had deaths/100,000 population in the last fourteen days that were higher than the United States, most at rates that were two-three times the U.S. rate. The rate for the world in total was 1.82 deaths per 100,000 population for the November 16-29 period. The U.S. was 3.38 times the global average at 6.22 deaths per 100,000 population in that two week period. The following 25 European countries exceeded the U.S. rate: France (11.76 deaths/100,000 population); Italy (16.04); Spain (8.31); United Kingdom (9.40); Armenia (12.81); Austria (13.47); Belgium (18.84); Moldova (6.50); Poland (16.65); Portugal (10.30); Romania (11.50); Serbia (7.11); Switzerland (14.98); Bulgaria (23.69); Croatia (15.92); Czechia (18.74); Greece (11.08); Hungary (16.12); Lithuania (8.12); Luxembourg (13.19); Malta (6.79); Slovenia (19.85); Bosnia and Herzegovina (20.75); Georgia (13.19); and North Macedonia (20.12).

With new restrictions in recent weeks bringing new cases down in a number of European countries, death rates should start to decline as well in bodog poker review the coming weeks. Challenges in terms of superspreader events in Europe include holiday travel and events and winter holidays and sports. Germany has proposed placing restrictions on the ski season to try to minimize increased cases from a sport popular across much of Europe. See DW, 26 November 2020, Coronavirus: Germany seeks EU-wide ban on ski trips, https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-germany-seeks-eu-wide-ban-on-ski-trips/a-55732273.

The EU has contracts with at least six pharmaceutical companies or groups for vaccines if approved. The EU and United Kingdom will start to see vaccine dosages within weeks assuming approval in their jurisdictions.

Other countries

While much of the rest of the world has not seen great increases in the number of cases that is not true for all countries. For example, Iran which had 136,753 new cases in the November 2-15 period showed 186,274 new cases in the November 16-29 period (+36.21%). Jordan, which has a total number of cases of 210,709 since the end of December has recorded 65.54% of that total in the last four weeks (68,698 new cases during November 2-15; 69,404 new cases during November 16-29). Similarly, Morocco which has a total of 349,688 cases since December 2019 has more than 37% recorded in the last four weeks (69,127 during November 2-15; 61,477 during November 16-29).

In the Americas the following countries in addition to the United States have two week totals to November 29 greater than 100,000 new cases: Argentina (108,531); Brazil (441,313); Colombia (108,609). The following countries besides the United States have more than one million cases since late December 2019: Argentina (1,413,362); Brazil (6,290,272); Colombia (1,299,613), Mexico (1,100,683). Eleven other countries have more than 100,000 cases (with Peru having 960,368). Other than the U.S., countries are facing different trend lines, many down, some showing increases (e.g., Brazil, Canada, Dominican Republic, Paraguay).

In Asia, while India continues to see declines in the number of new cases, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Palestine, South Korea, showed increased in the most recent two weeks, some quite large. This is in addition to Iran reviewed previously.

In Africa, South Africa has the most cases and saw an increase from 23,730 new cases during November 2-15 to 35,967 during November 16-29. Morocco was reviewed above. Most other major countries in Africa saw declines in recent weeks.

Conclusion

The world in the first eleven months of 2020 has struggled to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control with several major surge periods. The global number of new cases seems to have plateaued over the last week or so at extraordinarily high levels and the death rates has been climbing after a long period where deaths appeared to be declining. It is likely that the death rate will continue to increase for the rest of 2020.

After a period during the summer and early fall where restrictions in a number of countries were being relaxed, many countries in the norther hemisphere are reimposing various restrictions in an effort to dampen the spread of the coronavirus. While trade has significantly rebounded from the sharp decline in the second quarter of 2020, services trade remains more than 30% off of 2019 levels driven by the complete collapse of international travel and tourism. Many WTO members have put forward communications on actions that could be considered to speed economic recovery. The most recent was the Ottawa Group’s communication about a possible Trade and Health Initiative. See November 27, 2020, The Ottawa Group’s November 23 communication and draft elements of a trade and health initiative, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/11/27/the-ottawa-groups-november-23-communication-and-draft-elements-of-a-trade-and-health-initiative/.

The WTO TRIPS Council has a request for a waiver from most TRIPS obligations for all WTO Members on medical goods and medicines relevant to COVID-19 on which a recommendation is supposed to be forwarded to the General Council by the end of 2020 though it is opposed by a number of major Members with pharmaceutical industries. See November 2, 2020, India and South Africa seek waiver from WTO intellectual property obligations to add COVID-19 – issues presented, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/11/02/india-and-south-africa-seek-waiver-from-wto-intellectual-property-obligations-to-address-covid-19-issues-presented/.

With vaccines very close to approval in major markets like the United States and the European Union, there will be increased focus on efforts to ensure availability of vaccines and therapeutics and diagnostics globally on equitable and affordable terms. GAVI, CEPI and the WHO have been leading this initiative with the support of many governments and private sector players. Pharmaceutical companies also have global distribution plans being pursued in addition to the above efforts.

So there hopefully is light at the end of the tunnel that the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on the world. But vaccines without vaccinations won’t solve the pandemic’s grip. So communication and outreach globally will be critical to seeing that available vaccines are properly used. And all peoples need to be able to access the vaccines, some of which will be less available simply because of the infrastructure needs to handle the vaccines.

Trade policy options to minimize trade restrictions coupled with global cooperation and coordination should result in the world being able to rebuild in 2021 and beyond as more and more of the world is vaccinated.

Multilateral efforts to help the poorest countries deal with debt, make available trade finance and other actions continue to be a pressing need. Better plans and preparation for pandemics of the future are clearly needed. Reports suggest that many of the poorest countries have experienced loss of a decade or more of economic advancement during the pandemic. Building back greener and in a sustainable manner is critical for all.

The efforts of developed country governments and others to provide the stimulus domestically to reduce the downward spiral of the individual national economies and the global economy has been critical to limiting the damage at home and abroad. But the assumption of large amounts of debt will also pose significant challenges moving forward because of the greatly heightened national debt/GDP ratios that have developed and may restrict options for individual governments moving forward.

What is certain is that 2020 will be remembered as a year in which a virus inflicted enormous damage to the global health and to the global economy. Collectively, the level of spread has been far greater than should have been possible. Many nations were not prepared. Some, like the United States, exacerbated the problems through a lack of national government planning and messaging. Others like many in Europe, having done a good job of controlling the spread in the early months, made major mistakes as they opened up for summer vacations and didn’t deal with the problems that resulted from the reopening and experienced breathtaking surges which roughly doubled the global daily rate of new cases in five-six weeks and have led to the reimposition of a series of restrictions to try to tame the pandemic a second time. We collectively are better than the results achieved to date. The number of deaths in advanced countries is simply disgraceful.

2021 offers the opportunity for the world to come together and put COVID-19 behind us. Whether we will come to the end of 2021 and feel that this global nightmare is behind us and that there are national and global game plans to rebuild in a greener and more sustainable manner with greater opportunities for all is the question. Hopefully, the answer will be yes.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, bodog poker review|Most Popular_Congressional

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Rachel Accorsi — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 15:16:51 +0000

Below are Deputy Director-General Wolff’s comments to the G20 Leaders’ Summit on November 21.

“Thank you very much, Your Royal Highness, and I thank Saudi Arabia for its leadership.

“With respect to trade, there are three immediate challenges: to utilize trade to help underwrite the economic recovery, to facilitate trade in essential medical products to treat the pandemic, and to reform the institutional framework for world trade.

“First, trade finance for the developing world needs to be restored. The sum needed is very large, in the trillions of dollars. This step has been called for by business and by all the major international development banks along with the WTO. This is not just a development issue. When crops do not move and factories are idled throughout the developing world, the global recovery will be delayed for all. Close co-operation among the international financial institutions, the WTO and the large commercial banks will be needed. A trade finance initiative should be seen as an essential part of improving the outlook for economic recovery.

“Second, it is time for WTO Members to come together to agree on and implement measures to speed the supply of essential medical products worldwide to where they are needed.

“Global trade in pharmaceuticals should be duty-free under an updated Pharmaceutical Agreement.

“Medical equipment should be duty-free in an immediate update of the Information Technology Agreement.

“As new vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics start to be rolled out, barriers at borders must be reduced, with an international understanding limiting the use of export restrictions, providing for much greater transparency and accelerating improvements in trade facilitation efforts, particularly for the poorest countries.

“Third, and last, the identification of areas of common interest achieved by the Riyadh Initiative on the Future of the WTO should result in immediate serious engagement by WTO Members in a major institutional reform effort. This would involve restoring the WTO’s deliberative and negotiating functions, providing binding dispute settlement seen as legitimate by all and providing for a strong proactive Secretariat. The WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference next year will be an important landmark for this work. In actively engaging in the reform effort, G20 Members can contribute immeasurably to fulfilling the vision held by the founders of the multilateral trading system seven decades ago and the WTO a quarter century ago.

“Thank you.”

WTO, DDG Wolff urges G20 leaders to back WTO action to support economic rebound, pandemic response and WTO reform, 21 November 2020, https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news20_e/ddgaw_21nov20_e.htm.

The G20 Leaders Summit is taking place virtually on November 21-22. The results of the Summit will be released later today. While a positive picture on agreed actions by the G20 will be presented, it is hard to imagine the G20 actually embracing the objectives/needs outlined by DDG Wolff.

For example, while it is likely that the G20 will lend support to a trade finance initiative to assist developing countries, the size of the initiative that is actually supported may be far less than the ambitious levels (trillions of dollars) identified as needed by Deputy Director-Wolff.

Similarly, while there is support in some quarters (e.g., the EU) for some of the trade liberalization initiatives identified in DDG Wolff’s second item, it is hard to see WTO Members being willing to reach consensus quickly on any of the three initiatives outlined. Certainly, the Pharmaceutical Agreement should be updated; how long that takes to accomplish is another issue and is unlikely to occur in a timeframe relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic. So too it is unlikely that WTO Members will quickly agree to duty free treatment of medical equipment whether under the Information Technology Agreement or otherwise, although countries needing to import such equipment have to a limited extent unilaterally reduced or eliminated duties during the pandemic. Such voluntary and temporary reductions seem the more promising short term solution. Finally, while individual countries have adopted trade facilitating/streamlining actions to speed the movement of medical goods and the WTO’s notification process has provided fair transparency of government actions, it is unlikely that there will be a quick agreement on limiting the use of export restrictions. There could be agreement on improved transparency and the WTO could work with LDCs and others to help them implement trade facilitation steps useful in speeding movement of medical goods.

On the third objective, “a major institutional reform effort,” while the G20 will undoubtedly support such action and support at least two of the three stated core planks — “restoring the WTO’s deliberative and negotiating functions, providing binding dispute settlement seen as legitimate by all” — the huge differences in objectives/concerns of many of the G20 countries makes any rapid movement towards reform in fact unlikely. For example, the United States, at least under the Trump Administration, has pushed for a fundamental rebalancing of rights and obligations in light of changed economic circumstances, pushed for a determination on whether the organization can function with very different economic systems under a set of rules designed for one type of economy, is seeking a restoration of the limited role envisioned for the WTO dispute settlement system and for panels and the Appellate Body. China has different objectives and opposes most of the U.S. priorities. The EU has very different views from the United States on the dispute settlement system. Thus, even before one looks at the broader WTO Membership, these three major Members have very different views on reform that will make efforts at reform at least time consuming (years not months). DDG Wolff includes in his list of reform efforts “providing for a strong proactive Secretariat.” This is an objective that has been stated by one or more past Directors-General, but it is unclear that there is strong Member support for a stronger Secretariat. Considering the U.S. concerns with the Appellate Body, it is hard to see them wanting a stronger Secretariat at the expense of Members. Indeed, WTO Members have frozen the WTO budget for years, and India has been seeking a reduction in budget resources for the WTO (10% cut has been proposed). The U.S. has also raised questions about Secretariat actions that appear outside of the agreed role of the Secretariat.

Conclusion

The G20 can have and has had an important role in limiting some of the more harmful actions of both G20 countries and of others in time of crisis. The G20 efforts to mobilize agreement on ways to keep markets open, limit market restrictions and support global initiatives to help smaller and more vulnerable countries has been and will continue to be important to reduce the depth of economic contraction and speed of economic rebound. And, of course, the G20 efforts go far beyond trade.

It has been important that the G20 has been open to receiving input from various organizations, including the WTO. The G20 has the ability to act fairly quickly where there is agreement among the countries. On trade, there are some major differences among G20 members not only on WTO reform but also on the need for existing WTO options for temporary export restrictions and willingness for providing greater transparency or to reach quick agreement on trade liberalization actions. Some G20 members have proposed broader WTO actions, and such actions may very well occur in the coming years although whether in time to alter the reality in the field during the COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely. Voluntary actions are obviously available in terms of reducing import restrictions including tariffs on medical goods and medicines/vaccines, and a number of countries have adopted streamlining actions to speed movement of medical goods during the pandemic.

Deputy Director-General Wolff’s statement to the G20 Leaders Summit contains important possible actions that the G20 could take or support. Some support from G20 members will almost certainly be forthcoming. Unfortunately, G20 action will not likely result in complete adoption of DDG Wolff’s proposals, nor will G20 action likely permit rapid implementation within the WTO or other organizations of DDG Wolff’s proposals. But it is useful to have a picture of a highly desirable future even if the audience for the message is unlikely to rise to the occasion for the global good.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, bodog poker review|Most Popular_Congressional

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