The good news is that the Camden Conference is back in person. The Opera House has come alive after going dark for two years in the COVID Era, It was quite wonderful to see old friends and to catch the energy in the air again from yet another global challenge, namely, Global Trade and Politics: Managing Turbulence. One might be daunted by such a topic, but once again the Conference’s able and hardworking Program Committee, chaired by Charlotte Singleton, was up to task, bringing together as fine a group of panelists as I have seen in many years of Conference attendance. Such brilliance was needed to illuminate what is a dense and difficult thicket of issues.

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Drawing on a 19-year dataset of over 5,600 construction companies from 27 advanced economies and 14 emerging market economies, we use an innovative approach to measure the direct employment effect of $1 million of infrastructure spending by country income group and sector—electricity, roads, schools, hospitals, and water and sanitation. Because there is no data available for low-income developing countries, we estimate the employment impact by extrapolating from advanced economies and emerging market economies.

Our latest chart of the week shows average estimates, by sector, of the number of jobs that additional investments create along the supply chain. The amount of job creation depends on labor mobility—how easy it is to move across companies within sectors—and labor intensity—defined as the labor effects down the supply chain in a sector. For example, in an emerging market economy with high labor mobility and high labor intensity, around 35 jobs are created in water and sanitation per $1 million of additional investment. In a country with low labor mobility and low labor intensity, that number falls to around 8.

In advanced economies, $1 million of spending can generate an average of 3 jobs in schools and hospitals and over 6 jobs in the energy sector, assuming intermediate labor mobility and labor intensity levels. In low-income developing countries, the estimates are much larger and range from 16 jobs in roads to 30 jobs in water and sanitation. Put differently, each unit of public infrastructure investment creates more direct jobs in electricity in high-income countries and more jobs in water and sanitation in low-income countries.

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The impact could be higher for green investment, in part because many jobs in renewables do not require much education beyond high school and have low barriers to entry. Per $1 million invested, around 5–10 jobs could be created in green electricity, 2–12 jobs in efficient new buildings like schools and hospitals, and 5–14 in green water and sanitation through efficient agricultural pumps and recycling.

Investment in research and development can also create jobs—though mostly, if not exclusively—for high-skilled workers. Despite it being a much smaller component of public investment—mostly to government institutions and higher education—around 4 jobs are created in R&D per $1 million invested.

These results indicate that public spending on infrastructure can make a meaningful contribution to job creation. Overall, one percent of global GDP in public investment spending can create more than seven million jobs worldwide through direct employment effects alone.

Mariano Moszoro is a Senior Economist in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department.  His work experience and research focus on public finance, political economy, and infrastructure development.  Dr. Moszoro holds a Ph.D. and habilitation (French HDR/US tenure equivalent) in Economics from the SGH Warsaw School of Economics.  In 2005-2006, he was Deputy Minister of Finance of Poland and Chairman of the state development bank BGK.  In 2009-2011, Dr. Moszoro interned as a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley-Haas under Nobel laureate Oliver E. Williamson.  Dr. Moszoro has published in top journals and held academic positions at Berkeley, Harvard, GMU, and Paris.

To read the full commentary from IMF Blogs, please click here. 

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Producing these vaccines is evidently a complicated process, involving facilities in many locations, presumably implying a lot of cross-border shipments of vaccine ingredients. Notably, in Pfizer’s case all these facilities are in the United States and Western Europe, which is typical across pharma firms, although other companies have a few facilities in Brazil and India.So where do vaccine supply chains fit into the theory of international trade?If you’ve ever taken an economics course, you probably learned about the theory of comparative advantage, which says that countries trade to take advantage of their differences. The classic original example, from the early-19th-century economist David Ricardo, involved the exchange of English cloth for Portuguese wine.Comparative advantage is a powerful, illuminating theory — especially because it shows why countries export goods they’re relatively good at producing even if they’re less productive in those industries than potential competitors. Bangladesh is a low-productivity nation across the board (although it has been improving), but its productivity disadvantage is less pronounced in apparel than in other industries, so it has become a major clothing exporter.In the 1960s and 1970s, however, a number of economists began suggesting that comparative advantage was an incomplete story. World trade had been growing over time, but much of that growth involved trade between countries that didn’t seem very different — the United States and Canada, for example, or the nations of Western Europe. Furthermore, what these countries were selling to each other looked pretty similar: There was a lot of “intra-industry” trade like the large-scale, two-way trade in autos and related goods across the U.S.-Canada border.

What was going on? A few economists had long noted that comparative advantage wasn’t the only possible reason for international trade. Countries might also trade because production of some goods involves increasing returns — there are advantages to large-scale production, which creates an incentive to concentrate production in a few countries and export those goods to other countries. Automotive trade between the United States and Canada was a classic example: After the countries established a free-trade agreement for autos in 1965, North American car companies achieved economies of scale by limiting the range of items produced in Canada, exporting these goods and importing other items from the United States.But if trade reflected increasing returns rather than country characteristics, which countries would end up producing which goods? It might be largely random, the result of accidents of history.There was, however, remarkably little economic literature on increasing-returns trade until the late 1970s. Economists don’t like to talk about stuff they find hard to model, and trade models with increasing returns tended to be messy and confusing. Eventually, however, some economists came up with clever ways to cut through the confusion, in papers like this 1980 piece in the American Economic Review:

 

God, I was young! Anyway, history has a sense of humor. No sooner had economists come up with nifty models of trade between similar countries, driven by economies of scale, than the world economy took a hard turn away from that kind of trade toward trade between dissimilar countries driven by things like large differences in wages.World trade exploded from the mid-1980s until around 2008, a process sometimes called hyperglobalization:

And where trade growth in the ’60s and ’70s had largely involved advanced economies selling stuff to each other, hyperglobalization involved a surge in exports of manufactured goods from relatively low-wage developing countries:

So we had a New Trade Theory, but the new trade we were actually getting was much better explained by, well, old trade theory.

So what does all this have to do with vaccine supply chains? Well, as I already noted, vaccine ingredients are mainly produced in advanced countries — countries that are very similar in their education levels, overall level of technological competence and more. So why wasn’t each advanced country producing the whole ensemble of vaccine-related inputs? Here’s what Bown and Bollyky say:

“The business model that much of the pharmaceutical industry had shifted toward over the previous 25 years involved fragmentation. As tariffs and other trade barriers had fallen globally, information and communications technology (ICT) developed, shipping and logistics efficiency increased, and protection of intellectual property rights steadily improved. The fact that trade could play a greater role in distributing pharmaceutical products globally meant that companies could operate fewer plants but at a larger scale.” 

Hey, it’s New Trade Theory in action! And it sure looks as if there was a lot of random historical contingency determining national roles in the pattern of specialization. Europe was initially very dependent on Britain’s exports of lipids — but I doubt that there’s something about British culture that makes the country especially good at lipids. It’s just one of those accidents that play a big role in economic geography.Is there a moral to this story? There’s been a lot of backlash against globalization over the past decade, to some extent justified: Advocates of free-trade agreements oversold their benefits and understated the disruptions they might cause. But the case of vaccine production illustrates a positive side of globalization we tend to forget. These miracle vaccines are incredibly complex products that would have been hard to develop and produce in any one country, even one as large as the United States. A global market made it possible to deliver all the specialized inputs that are saving thousands of lives as you read this.

Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 2000 as an Op-Ed columnist. He is distinguished professor in the Graduate Center Economics Ph.D. program and distinguished scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center at the City University of New York. In addition, he is professor emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

To read the full commentary from The New York Times, please click here. 

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According to the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook released in April 2021, the global economy is projected to recover in 2021 and 2022 with anticipated GDP growth of 6% and 4.4% respectively. This growth, however, is not projected to be shared equally across countries or industries.

As trade economists, we’d like to offer perspectives about how the economic recovery is progressing.

Economic recovery so far is based on three main factors:

• First and foremost is uneven access to vaccines—each economy’s growth hinges on vaccine availability and efficacy.
• Second, domestic policies, which vary across countries, significantly impact the pace of economic recovery.
• Third, the pace of recovery will also depend on country-specific structural factors, particularly reliance on high-contact sectors, such as tourism.

Furthermore, advanced economies and developing countries vary in their capacities to execute short- and long-term recovery strategies. This has a direct impact on their abilities to recover:

• Advanced economies are projected to recover faster than emerging market and developing economies. Advanced economies had the fiscal space at the beginning of the crisis to implement effective stimulus measures, and many now can quickly roll out vaccines. This bloc tends to have larger work-from-home flexibility in conducting business as they generally have higher technology intensity in the production process and digital infrastructure.
• Conversely, developing countries historically do not have as much room in their budgets to stimulate their economies, and have not been able to vaccinate their populations as quickly as advanced economies. Lacking access to vaccines effectively places a ceiling on growth, and some estimates project that developing economies will not have widespread access to vaccines for several years. Businesses in developing economies tend to depend more on face-to-face interactions and have fewer work-from-home jobs. In the meantime, developing economies will likely suffer from economic scarring, or long-term effects.

 Recoveries also vary largely by country according to the data in May. In particular:

• The United States is projected to surpass pre-COVID levels of GDP in 2021 thanks to a rapid vaccine rollout and three rounds of stimulus checks that have kept American consumers spending through the pandemic.
• The European Union (EU) is expected to recover to pre-COVID GDP levels a bit later, in mid-2022, due to a slow vaccine rollout and dependency on sectors that rely on human contact and interaction, such as tourism, cultural and creative industries. The EU has struggled bodog sportsbook review with a third wave of COVID-19 infections and new lockdowns.
• In contrast, the United Kingdom(UK) is expected to recover faster than the rest of Europe despite having longer lockdowns than many European countries, one of the deadliest outbreaks in 2020, and complications from Brexit. Its early procurement of vaccines and rapid vaccination drive to deliver the first shot to as many people as possible are key to a quicker recovery. Also important is the UK’s quick fiscal policy response; it was the first major economy to set plans to repair the damage to public finances caused by the pandemic.
• China has surprised many with the speed of its recovery. The world’s second-largest economy grew 2.3% in 2020—the only major economy to avoid a contraction last year. This growth has continued in 2021 as a rebound in foreign demand has encouraged higher export growth. Partially hit by global chip shortages and international logistics jams, the economy’s strong pandemic bounce-back presents a two-speed track, with strong industrial output and export demand but lagging consumer spending.

Focus on Trade:

As of spring 2021, overall global trade volumes have numerically returned to pre-pandemic levels, but their composition looks different. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), global trade began recovering in the third quarter of 2020 and continued through the end of the year. Goods trade led the charge, recovering far more quickly than services. Goods like home office and communications equipment performed remarkably well compared to last year. Services trade, suffering from pandemic-related restrictions as well as consumer hesitation to travel, bottomed out in the second quarter of 2020 and is recovering sluggishly. Travel and tourism is understandably the most impacted services sector (check out NTTO’s dashboard for how this is progressing in the U.S.).

For a U.S. perspective on the recovery in trade, check out ITA’s monthly analysis of U.S. exports, imports, and other vital trade data.

From a global perspective, this crisis will continue to have echo-effects long after the virus is contained. With each passing day we have some more insight into how the virus has affected the global economy. While it is too early to understand the full picture, for now we can see simply that growth has a double ceiling: virus containment and vaccine access. Until the virus is controlled, we will continue on a bumpy, uneven road to recovery.

Brooke Tenison is an International Economist in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Trade Policy and Analysis; and Susan Xu is an International Economist in the Office of Trade and Economic Policy

To read the original commentary from the International Trade Administration, please visit here

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That’s one of the global trade lessons from a panel of government and business experts hosted last week by Bloomberg and the Asia Society’s Australia chapter. Tariff wars were already roiling the world economy. Now everything from fiscal bailouts to food protectionism may draw scrutiny from institutions like the Geneva-based World Trade Organization that try to enforce rules against unfair public assistance in otherwise free global markets.

“That’s got a long way to go, particularly as countries re-evaluate what they’re doing in their own national interest” to support a particular airline, product, industry or type of manufacturing, said Michael Byrne, Australia’s international freight coordinator-general.

“There will have to be a different framework about what is deemed ‘compliant’ or not, and I think the political class will have to take a fair bit of time looking at that,” said Byrne, whose government-appointed role involves liaising with businesses to ensure the trade lanes remain as smooth as possible amid still-tight mobility restrictions.

Such questions around renewed nationalism exacerbated tensions between open and closed economies during the crisis, said Deborah Elms, founder and executive director of the Singapore-based Asian Trade Centre. That friction is set to worsen, forcing businesses to re-evaluate their supplier bases.

“The default will be: closer to home, regional agreements, bilateral agreements, where firms — if they’re smart — will start leveraging these opportunities,” she said.

Among the other supply-chain lessons the panelists outlined, for the pandemic era and beyond:

• Human relationships count. “The demand signals have been all over the place,” which has made rethinking supply chains hard to do, but having close relationships with all partners has helped, said Nick Mann, managing director of Australia and New Zealand for H&H Group. His business bought raw materials over finished goods this year, to see where demand settled and to better judge supply.
• Supercharge your digitization. Businesses already thrust into a digital revolution have to do more coming out of the pandemic, said Maggie Zhou, managing director of Australia and New Zealand for Alibaba Group. “You will better understand your consumer, and supply better for your consumer” as businesses cater to the digital audience. Alibaba is focusing more on what its 870 million mobile app users want, and making products in response.
• Be wary of the blockchain boom. In response to an audience question, Elms was skeptical that blockchain would catch on widely anytime soon. Governments would either have to approve such a system or at least allow it to happen. “They have no idea what you’re even talking about when you use the word ‘blockchain’ and they don’t understand how it would work, and they’re not convinced this is a good thing,” she said. Businesses are likely to be disappointed by how quickly this can happen, though trade financing or bank transactions between suppliers are likely to sprout first, and then regulation will follow, she said.

Michelle Jamriskco is a Bloomberg Senior Asia Economy Reporter. 

To read the original blog, click here. 

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However, recently released trade statistics across the world reveal that those forecasts may have been overly pessimistic and underestimated the relative resilience of the global trading system. In fact, in June, after several months of sharp declines, trade volumes recorded their biggest monthly rise on record, with a 7.6 percent increase. East Africa may be shadowing these global trends.

Kenya, the largest regional trader, is a good barometer of broader East African trends. The country was initially hit quite hard in terms of the decline in trade volumes, with a 19 percent drop in total trade volumes in April. As warned in our earlier Brookings policy brief, re-exports to the rest of the region were hit extremely hard, with a 83 percent decline in April. Since June, though, total trade volumes have begun to recover rapidly, with a 9 percent increase in June and a 12 percent increase in July (Table 1). Moreover, the story is a similar if the analysis is undertaken using year-on-year percent changes.

Table 1. Kenyan trade, percent monthly change, January-July 2020

Source: Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2020

STRONG SIGNS OF RECOVERY

Kenyan exports have proved to be particularly resilient during this crisis. If we take the data for “domestic exports” alone (i.e., subtracting the re-export of goods to other countries), it is clear that the export performance has been extremely volatile, with a record monthly peak in export revenues in March, followed by a sharp drop in April/May. However, by July, domestic exports were 12.7 percent higher than in July of the previous year (Figure 1, Panel A). More specifically, although Kenya’s large cut-flower industry has not yet fully recovered, seasonal exports of tea, fruit, and vegetables have held up extremely well, in part due to government measures to protect these sectors from the negative impacts of lockdowns. Among the measures undertaken were the ring-fencing of the tea sector from mobility restrictions to minimize the disruption to exports; the re-equipping of some passenger planes to be able to carry cargo; and the creation of mobile laboratories for cross-border testing to facilitate smooth trade flows with Tanzania.

The other salient characteristic in Kenya’s trade performance throughout the COVID-19 crisis is that exports to the rest of the East African Community (EAC) recovered very rapidly indeed (Figure 1, panels B, C, and D). In our earlier Brookings policy brief analyzing data up through May, we flagged with some alarm the apparent collapse of intra-regional trade, as reflected in the sharp decline in Kenya re-exports to the rest of the region. By July, however, exports to Uganda and Rwanda had exceeded their pre-COVID-19 peaks, and re-exports towards Tanzania also bodog poker review accelerated sharply. Notably, the recovery picture is broadly confirmed by data recently released by the Bank of Uganda. Both export and import performance have recovered, and Ugandan coffee exports almost reached a historic high in July, despite relatively low coffee prices in international markets.

Figure 1. Patterns of trade—Kenya vs. other EAC countries

Source: Authors, from Kenya National Bank of Statistics data.
Note: Shaded area represents period of COVID-19 pandemic. Dotted lines are 3-month moving averages.

Initially, measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 across borders, such as mandatory COVID-19 tests on lorry drivers, caused large-scale disruption to East African trade. But the subsequent rebound in intra-regional trade is a testimony to the effectiveness of actions taken by national governments and the EAC Secretariat to ensure the smooth functioning of transport corridors, as well as initiatives like TradeMark East Africa’s $20 million Safe Trade Emergency Facility (STEF) and GIZ’s support of mobile laboratories, test kits, and personal protective equipment to the East African Community.

IMPLICATIONS FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY STRATEGIES IN EAST AFRICA

In summary, despite the depth of the economic crisis precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, since May 2020 intra-regional trade in East Africa has shown significant resilience with a notable positive correlation with measures put in place to protect transport corridors from severe disruptions.

While the V-shaped recovery in trade is encouraging, East African economies are not out of the woods yet. Three policy conclusions stand out:

1. The crisis is far from over. Governments in the region—especially those of landlocked Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uganda—should continue to maintain exceptional measures to support cross-border trade and a favorable trading environment, particularly for intra-regional trade.
2. Protecting key export sectors from the negative impact of any COVID-19-related measures is essential. Kenya has shown that it is possible to keep value chains operating and shelter strategic sectors from adverse impact. Sustaining export revenues, at a time of growing foreign exchange shortages, is also a macroeconomic imperative.
3. Finally, one area where policy measures have been less effective is in avoiding the collapse of cross-border informal trade. Until free movement of people is reestablished, it is unlikely that border communities dependent on this trade will recover. Cross-border communities—particularly women traders who account for the bulk of informal trade—are still highly vulnerable to this crisis and will continue to need additional support.

Andrew Mold is chief, Regional Integration and AfCFTA Cluster, Office for Eastern Africa, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Anthony Mveyange is director of research and learning at TradeMark East Africa.

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The week began with the marking — not celebration — of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations. A celebration would sit at odds with the parlous state of international cooperation today, with major powers pursuing nativist, beggar-thy-neighbour policies in worrying disregard for institutions and allies.

Perhaps, given such strains, we should be content with the mere fact that G20 Trade Ministers met virtually today for the third time this year. This would be a mistake. Now more than ever, we need G20 governments to look beyond their differences and unite in pursuit of trade policies that will speed efforts to bring the acute phase of the pandemic to an end, offer a lifeline to hard-pressed small businesses and set the foundations for a rapid and resilient global recovery in 2021. Lamentably, today’s Communiqué fails on all three fronts.

We are at a critical juncture in our global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 30 million cases recorded and nearly one million deaths. A wave of tit-for-tat export restrictions and policy flipflops earlier in the year saw massive uncertainty in PPE availability, leading to shortages in supply for health workers worldwide. Now that the emergency phase has passed, G20 countries must remove these temporary restrictions and make sure that they do not transition to longer term distortions.

Despite worrying signs of vaccine nationalism from several key manufacturing countries, 156 economies are committed to or eligible to receive vaccines through the multilateral COVAX facility. Yet, similar cooperation is yet to be seen on the trade dimensions of global vaccine access — leaving open the risk that the trading system will become the battleground on which countries rush to secure early doses of proven vaccines.

Given lessons learned from hastily imposed trade restrictions earlier in the year, one would hope the G20 would find common ground on the need to devise trade policies that ensure rational and equitable access to forthcoming COVID-19 vaccines for all countries. Yet today’s Communiqué is largely silent on this most vital of issues, emphasising only that trade policies are essential in achieving this, and that the G20 — the premier forum for international economic cooperation — “will continue to explore COVID-19 related WTO initiatives in this respect”.

With potentially millions of lives at stake — not to mention the livelihoods of billions — the absence of a clear plan to take trade barriers out of the equation in the supply of COVID-19 vaccines feels like sheer recklessness. Perhaps the trade chiefs of the world’s largest economies need reminding that the maxim that “no one is safe unless everyone is safe” is not a liberal platitude, but a dictum of sound economic management. In our interdependent global economy, businesses will only be able to thrive once mortality is controlled and positive economic conditions return in all countries.

If COVID-19 has proven one thing, it is that the digital economy is indispensable to global prosperity. Given this, business regards a swift conclusion of the plurilateral Joint Statement Initiative on E-Commerce as an essential building block for a rapid and resilient post-pandemic recovery. Seen in this light, the call in the Communiqué for “significant progress” in the lead up to the MC12 rings hollow. For global business, the goal should be agreement of a high standard outcome next year, with strong commitments on market access and connectivity, liberalised cross-border data flow with trust (informed by the G20’s Osaka Track), trade facilitation and capacity building.

And then there is the issue of WTO reform. Noting repeated calls from G20 Leaders to reform the WTO, the Saudi Presidency launched the Riyadh Initiative on the Future of the WTO in March. Unfortunately, progress to date appears to amount to little more than a recapitulation of the foundational principles in the Marrakesh Agreement that underpin the WTO, and a stated determination to ‘tackle the necessary reform of the functions of the WTO and to discuss all proposals in this regard’. Despite the urgency, there is a worrying lack of specificity, reflective of both a dearth of imagination and a lack of political will. But we have no time to waste. For business, we see an urgent need for strengthened governance and accountability, a rulebook fit for a digitally transformed post-COVID economy, and a global trading regime that coheres with climate and sustainability imperatives.

The Communiqué is not all doom and gloom. It is encouraging, for instance, that G20 countries affirmed the need to conclude the selection process of the next WTO Director General by November 7. I have written about the considerations that are front of mind for business in the selection process here — and enjoyed positive discussions with the candidates, all of whom would bring fresh energy to this most vital of global institutions.

It is also encouraging to see the G20 generate policy guidelines on boosting MSMEs’ international competitiveness. The focus, in particular, on digital connectivity to enable cross-border trade for MSMEs is a welcome one. Throughout the crisis, ICC has shone on a spotlight on the policies needed to Save Our SMEs, including by enabling paperless trade and keeping trade finance flowing.

On this latter agenda, recent market turbulence highlights the looming risk that the supply of trade finance will retrench significantly just as demand returns to the economy. For MSMEs banking on trade as a means to stave off foreclosures, warm words from the G20 just aren’t enough — they need real-world action to backstop the supply of credit essential to their continued operations. Perhaps G20 Finance Ministers can rise to this challenge when they meet next month.

Whatever the forum, the real economy can only hope for greater resolve from the world’s leading economies in charting a response to the crisis — and, specifically, a response that truly reflects the interconnectedness of the global economy and addresses the downside risks to lives and livelihoods in the critical months ahead.

John W.H. Denton AO is the Secretary-General at the International Chamber of Commerce.

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However, as markets have gradually opened up in major consumer centers like the U.S. in recent months, demand is slowly beginning to return. In fact, the Census Bureau’s Advance Monthly Retail Trade Report for June indicated that American shoppers had returned to retailers with vigor in May and June. This newfound enthusiasm did not seem to last very long, though, and media reports from early July confirmed what the U.S. retail sector has feared: The pandemic has made many Americans fearful of large, enclosed retail spaces.

However, at the same time that traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are scrambling to come to terms with their new economic reality, e-commerce sales have soared to new heights. As more companies look to build their online markets in earnest, they are going to increasingly face challenges with procurement of inventory and supply to keep pace with rising demand. While the local U.S. supply chain recovers gradually from the pandemic, much of this demand will continue to be met from overseas shipments, and this poses an opportunity for intrepid importers and other members of the supply chain in the U.S. import market.

Changing Global Order

U.S. government data shows that the country’s trade deficit in May rose for the third straight month, increasing 9.7% to $54.6 billion. While overall American imports decreased 0.9% to $199.1 billion month on month, their lowest total since July 2010, imports of key consumer-facing segments rose substantially, including foods, feeds and beverages ($35 million), industrial supplies and materials ($2.3 billion), and consumer goods ($1.9 billion). This indicates a resurgence in consumer demand, one that will continue to be met primarily, in the short-to-medium term at least, by imports.

As demand starts surging, importers, especially small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), are likely to find it difficult to procure fresh inventory to fulfill orders, particularly given the rise in aversion to China, a key global supplier. Despite increasingly aggressive trade rhetoric between the two countries, U.S. imports from China still increased $2.7 billion to $37.9 billion in May, almost 23% of all American imports. Finding alternatives for this volume of trade will be an arduous undertaking.

It’s also likely to be a suppliers’ market in the coming weeks as a lot of backed-up supply in other markets like India and Vietnam gets released into global trade. Media reports from these countries indicate that exports of essential goods, such as agricultural commodities, foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals (which form major components of the export basket in these nations) have continued to rise in recent months despite the lockdown, and are set to maintain their upward trend. Additionally, while the exports of more discretionary goods (such as apparel and consumer electronics) from these nations slowed down under their lockdowns, American consumer demand for these categories appears to have risen, indicating that recovery for these sectors may be in the cards sooner rather than later. With local manufacturing in these markets rapidly pushing for a return to normalcy, U.S. importers can likely anticipate a rise in supply, weakening their bargaining power in a market dominated by steady supply and spikes in consumer demand.

(Inventory) Financing American Recovery

Because of the above reasons, U.S. importers may find themselves at a disadvantage when negotiating terms with suppliers, and this could have a negative impact on their finances. However, they can leverage an alternative solution to meet their working capital requirements and forestall any fiscal gaps: inventory financing.

At its core, inventory financing is a form of credit available to businesses by selling goods and products they already have but do not need to sell immediately. By collateralizing their existing inventory, businesses can get access to working capital in hand that they can then use to grow their business.

SMB importers approaching inventory financing should keep in mind the following:

1. Inventory financing is aimed almost exclusively at businesses in the product/merchandise trade space — i.e., businesses with physical inventory. For SMBs in the service sector, inventory financing is unlikely to be of any help.

2. Most lenders will check prior sales performance of businesses to check their viability for inventory finance. Having a strong sales record can help establish credibility, particularly because SMB importers often have poor credit scores, too.

3. Like other alternative finance options, inventory finance is meant to be an add-on or supplement that SMBs can leverage to access working capital in an emergency. Relying on it as a primary source of finance for the business can lead to slower-than-expected growth, because most lenders are unable to provide finance beyond certain limits.

4. Particularly in the wake of Covid-19, broken supply chains could sometimes mean that inventory spends a long time in storage before being shipped to consumers. SMBs may not always be able to manage this stored inventory properly. In such a case, opting for add-on warehouse management offerings provided by many inventory financiers may be a good idea. It costs extra, but offers the assurance that the inventory is taken care of. 

By leveraging their existing inventory through third-party inventory financing, U.S. importers can access cash they need to place fresh orders and meet demand from their consumers. Additionally, warehouse management offerings rolled into certain key supply chain finance packages also assist in reducing logistics overheads for SMBs and free up additional cash reserves. This could be a crucial factor toward helping SMB importers in the U.S. not only recover from the economic slowdown after the pandemic, but also set themselves up for growth in the months to come.

Forbes Finance Council is an invitation-only organization for executives in successful accounting, financial planning and wealth management firms. Do I qualify?

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The coronavirus crisis has cut deep into global trade flows.  The ‘Great Lockdown’ has shut borders, curtailed consumer demand, and broken supply chains. Ports have been closed and international travel has virtually ceased. The global economy is set to shrink by 6 – 8 per cent in 2020, and world trade by up to 12 per cent. Yet ‘slowbalisation’ was already taking hold in the global economy before Covid-19 jumped from a bat to a Hubei farmer sometime in late 2019. Global trade rose only marginally faster than global output in the decade after 2010, having risen at more than twice the pace of output in the early 2000s. The share of Global Value Chains in trade fell during the same period. Rising protectionism, the US-China trade war, automation and increased domestic production, all took their toll on the model of globalisation that had structured world trade in the ‘long 1990s’ before the financial crisis.

In a wide ranging interview with the Financial Times, French President, Emmanuel Macron, declared that this model of globalisation had reached ‘the end of its cycle’.  It had lifted millions out of poverty and deposed totalitarian governments, but had also increased inequality and undermined democracy, he argued. The Covid-19 crisis has accelerated this reassessment.

National governments are now taking stock of their economic resilience against future pandemics. Can they build or get enough ventilators, masks, personal protective equipment and diagnostic tests, and produce vaccine supplies?  Do they have national control over strategic sectors, like pharmaceuticals and telecommunications, as well as defence? The German government recently bought a 23 per cent stake in Curevac, a biotech company based in Tubingen that is developing a Covid-19 vaccine, in order to block a US takeover. Macron has declared that France will seek ‘medical self-sufficiency’ and is investing in national research and production capabilities. And pandemic preparedness bleeds easily into geo-political industrial strategy: the EU commission has set out plans to block access to public procurement contracts from state-subsidised Chinese companies. It now describes China as ‘systemic rival’ to the EU.

Industrial and commercial concerns are increasingly overlaid by foreign and security policy objectives. The US is challenging its allies to come into line behind its attempts to constrain and contain China, citing security concerns for pushing prohibitions on Huawei in 5G development, blocking involvement in China’s Belt and Road initiative, and limiting foreign investment by Chinese companies.  The Johnson government has launched ‘Project Defend’ – an examination of the UK’s national capabilities for producing essential supplies and an assessment of its economic vulnerability to hostile governments. bodog poker review It has folded the Department for International Development back into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, largely on trade and security grounds. Much of this is code for rethinking the UK’s relationships – both economic and political – with China.  The shifts in government policy reflect rising hostility to China on the Tory backbenches, of which the formation of a new hawkish ‘China Research Group’ is emblematic.

Emerging from the pandemic, world history will have two main vectors: climate change and strategic competition between the US and China. Where does this leave ‘Global Britain’?

Brexit was a political project launched on the prospectus of opening Britain up to the world, uncoupled from the EU’s customs union and single market. Even without a slowdown in global trade and the colossal impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, this was always fraught with risk. Geography trumps history in trade, and the cost of erecting barriers to the flow of goods and services with Europe will outweigh any benefits from new free trade deals with the rest of the world. But now the UK government must reckon with pressure to align with the US against China, risking retaliation from Beijing, while simultaneously pulling up the economic and diplomatic anchors of its EU membership. Autarky is not an option. The pandemic has brutally exposed the weakness of both the state’s capabilities and domestic manufacturing in the UK. Nor is an ‘Anglosphere’ alliance of the ‘5 Eyes’ nations of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA likely to be more than gestural. Britain will have to find a new place for itself in the world.

Global trade will recover in 2021 but it will not bring back the old model of globalisation. The opportunity exists for governments to use the pandemic as a critical juncture for building a new global order, with the goals of public health, peaceful coexistence, tackling the climate emergency, and distributing economic growth more equitably, at its core.  This is a task – as big as anything faced at Bretton Woods – to which a genuinely ‘Global Britain’ might contribute.

Nick Pearce is Professor of Public Policy and Director of the University of Bath Institute for Policy Research (IPR).

To read the original commentary from the University of Bath Institute for Policy Research (IPR), please visit here

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Firm-specific cases such as the French seizure of surgical masks owned by Mölnlycke, a Swedish company, and the dispute between 3M and the Trump administration illustrate that while export restrictions and requisitions of domestic supplies of essential goods may seem an obvious and justifiable measure, they give rise to unintended consequences. The result may be to reduce access to critical supplies, increase average prices significantly, augment market volatility, and generate negative spillover effects on other countries. Potential adverse effects go beyond public health and economic consequences and extend to the foreign policy domain, eroding trust among trading partners.

Robust government intervention is critical in emergencies like the current COVID-19 pandemic. Regulation is needed to ensure that scarce critical supplies are allocated to priority uses, notably health care providers and to control speculation. This cannot and certainly should not be “left to the market.” But export restrictions are second-best responses. Reasons include retaliation (emulation) by other nations, reallocation of supplies by companies away from the country imposing restrictions, promotion of panic buying, hoarding and speculation, and negative reputational effects that impact on investor risk perceptions once the crisis has passed.

In the short run many of the downside effects are associated with price spikes and volatility resulting from constraining access to imported inputs needed for domestic plants to ramp up local production rapidly and reducing the availability of final goods. Many firms have organized production in international production networks and need to be able to source parts and components in order to produce, let alone scale up output.

Allowing international supply chains to work is critical to ramp up supply. Arguments that the current crisis points to the need for greater self-sufficiency are misconceived. Serious short-term supply constraints would exist at national level as well following a pandemic. Having to cross a border is not the issue given that it only takes 48 hours or so to get anything from anywhere in the world. Autarky will not make it any faster to get whatever is critical in a crisis to those who need it. What is needed is for governments ensure that stocks of essential supplies are built up before crises hit and diversification of production capacity across different regions that permit supply to ramped when needed without risk of being blocked or impounded. The focus needs to be on encouraging and supporting business responses as opposed to disrupting supply chains and engaging in negative sum competition for existing supplies and production capacity.

There has already been a massive supply response to the sharp increase in demand for personal protective equipment (PPE). All established suppliers have greatly expanded production but cannot ramp up fast enough. Many firms in other sectors have also demonstrated a capacity to produce essential protective gear. To do so firms need information on demand, applicable product and production standards, be able to obtain rapid certification and to source requisite inputs – including from foreign suppliers. Effective two-way communication channels are needed for firms to identify specific bottlenecks that impede ramping up of supply.

Information is critical – for governments and for firms

Firms need to have systems to monitor market conditions and identify slack and chokepoints in their global network to enable adjustments in production to respond to changes in demand. Governments need information systems that allow them to determine where supply capacity exists and that helps to understand the relevant supply chains. Firms generally will have information on supply options, but governments often will not have such information readily to hand. Both sets of actors need to be able to identify bottlenecks in the supply chain in real time and cooperate in addressing them.

This calls for information systems that permit identification of weak links in supply chains and sources of friction impeding production expansion that are due to – or can be overcome – through policy action. Such information systems were not in place in many if not most countries. Authorities did not have a good understanding of the prevailing supply chains and production capacity. Individual lead firms of course know their supply chains but do not share this information as it is a source of competitive advantage. There are exceptions, such as the New Zealand Medicines and Medical Safety Authority, which requires firms to disclose their supply chain, including where active ingredients for medicines are made and where they are packaged. However, most authorities and jurisdictions seem to have been largely in the dark regarding the nature and composition of the relevant supply chains. There is a notable contrast here with other policy areas such as food products, where traceability throughout the supply chain has become a common feature of the production and distribution process.

Standards and certification of products/plants/suppliers are critical for safety, but the associated regulatory enforcement processes can be a constraint in responding rapidly to an emergency. One good practice here is for governments to accept foreign standards during the emergency as was done by the US Centers for Disease Control approving use of respirators that satisfied equivalent foreign standards, including China’s GB 2626-2006 and GB 2626-2019 standards as well as the European EN 149-2001 standards. The existence of common product standards and mutual recognition of standards facilitates supply responses and cross-border production arrangements. This reinforces the value of international regulatory cooperation, mutual recognition arrangements and efforts to determine whether and where regulatory regimes across countries/systems have the same goals – and in such instances work towards establishing equivalence regimes.

The opportunity cost of not having equivalence and recognition regimes in place was illustrated by the decision by China to impose new export license requirements in early April 2020. The government was responding to rejections by several European countries of PPE shipments sourced bodog sportsbook review from Chinese companies on quality grounds. The Chinese authorities feared a reputational backlash and sought to ensure that exported products meet quality and safety standards by limiting exports to firms certified to sell in domestic market (i.e., firms having been accredited as meeting Chinese technical regulations). Companies accredited by buyers in the US or EU – e.g., firms with CE certification – were blocked from exporting by the new regulation until they had obtained certification in China. Cooperation between governments (regulators) to establish recognition and equivalence arrangements for certification and acceptance of foreign standards would help prevent the application of rigid enforcement of national standards with their associated detrimental trade restricting effects, especially in a time of crisis where unilateral action can have very high humanitarian costs.

Beyond unilateralism: international cooperation in the G20 and WTO

The focus of trade policy responses has been on unilateral action to facilitate imports of products that are most salient to combat COVID-19, direct available supplies to domestic use, and to control or prohibit exports. Trade agreements have not been much of a factor in either constraining beggar-thy-neighbor policies or fostering cooperative responses. Experience has made clear that seeking to agree to binding disciplines for export restrictions is doomed to failure. Instead, cooperation should center on improving crisis response coordination by generating and sharing information on supply-demand trends, improving policymakers and public understanding of the organization and operation of relevant supply chains and joint action to minimize supply chain production and distribution bottlenecks and frictions.

The post-financial crisis period has made clear that G20 countries are unwilling to live up to strong trade policy commitments. The attenuation in support for multilateral cooperation that has been evident over the past decade and the electoral success of political parties that oppose globalization and an open world economy makes any effort to agree to disciplines on export restrictions very unlikely to succeed. However, cooperation centered on information exchange, dialogue and peer review may be more feasible. Such efforts should encompass the private sector given that the latter has a much better grasp of the relevant supply chains. Public-private policy partnerships to generate and share up-to-date information on supply conditions and supply chain capacity around the globe would help governments and industry understand the state of play and coordinate policy responses, address supply chain bottlenecks and strengthen supply responses.

Following the 2007-08 global food price shocks, which led to a third of global wheat production and over half of world rice output becoming subject to export restrictions, the G20 created the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), This has helped countries to generate information on supply-demand balances, stocks, and policies, supported by a network of international expertise. A similar system for the medical and protective product markets that are critical for effective responses to public health emergencies could help promote transparency and provide a platform for governments and relevant international organizations to coordinate crisis responses.

Like-minded WTO members are currently pursuing several potential plurilateral agreements that would apply only to signatories, including on e-commerce, investment facilitation, regulation of services and supporting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. As part of their COVID-19 response, New Zealand and Singapore have agreed to eliminate applied tariffs for essential medical and protective products, medicines and agricultural products; refrain from export restrictions on such goods and to expedite their movement through their ports. They have indicated they would welcome other countries joining them.

In addition to such trade policy-centric actions, plurilateral initiatives should also be considered to increase the resilience of international supply chains and coordinate responses to global collective action problems, including crisis situations like the current pandemic. A public-private policy partnership to identify and address supply chain bottlenecks and frictions could help support efficient and rapid responses to international emergencies. Another policy area where open plurilateral agreements could add value pertains to mutual recognition and equivalence regimes for technical regulation and certification of protective equipment and medical supplies. Such agreements entail positive and pro-active cooperation to address supply side constraints, complementing desirable unilateral actions to facilitate trade.

Bernard Hoekman is Professor, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and Dean, External Relations, European University Institute.

Matteo Fiorini is a Research Fellow in Global Economics at the Global Governance Programme of the European University Institute.

Aydin B. Yildirim is a Marie Curie Fellow at the World Trade Institute, University of Bern.

To read the original commentary from Global Policy, please visit here

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