Global Economies

By convening sector-specific meetings between local business people from both countries, the project aims to produce a concrete set of feasible recommendations to encourage greater bilateral trade. 

The inaugural January meeting brought together small to medium-sized business leaders from the agricultural sector to consider boosting greater trade on a micro level, as well as discuss the shortcomings and challenges of each countries’ agricultural and trade policy. 

Click here to read a French translation of this event report. 

Click here to read an Arabic translation of this event report.

Valued at $62 billion, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a focal point of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s ambitious undertaking to enhance connectivity between Asia, Europe, and Africa. CPEC promises to create economic prosperity by turning Gwadar, Pakistan, into a trade hub that links China to the rest of Asia and Europe. However, with Pakistan’s economy suffering and in the midst of a bailout by the International Monetary Fund, Islamabad has been more carefully scrutinizing CPEC’s affordability. Pakistan has been coming to terms with the massive, unsustainable amount of Chinese loans it has taken to implement these projects.

Six years into this initiative, Beijing is beginning to acknowledge the growing international criticism about its distortive lending practices, and it is pledging to instill a greater level of openness, transparency, and sustainability. The Chinese government is taking steps to not only help Pakistan, which has been dubbed its “all-weather friend,” to restore its economic balance, but also to realize the true promise of CPEC.

Click here to read the full article on RealClearWorld. 

The EastWest Institute’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) program and CARPO proudly announce the launch of a joint project on “Iraq and Its Neighbors,” which aims to enhance dialogue and regional integration between Iraq and surrounding countries, specifically Turkey, Jordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The project will organize a series of bilateral working groups that aim at fostering exchange on topics and issues of common interest and challenges including trade, border control, climate change, reconstruction, security and counterterrorism.

EastWest Institute Vice President for MENA Kawa Hassan and CARPO CEO Adnan Tabatabai signed a Memorandum of Understanding to kick off the partnership launch in Brussels on Tuesday the June 5, 2019.

“Iraq and Its Neighbors” will run for 18 months and is supported financially by the European Union’s Foreign Policy Instrument.

The chosen topic encapsulates well how much the international landscape has changed with Trump’s presidency and the perceived decline of American power, and the reality of China’s steady emergence as a global power in competition with the US. It also conveys that Europe should now be seen as a swing entity and not an independent power center.

That the new battleground could conceivably be China-Europe vs. America-Europe implies that Europe-US differences are becoming fundamental, that the Trump phenomenon constitutes a longer-term transformation of America and not an aberration that could pass with a change in the US presidency, and hence, Europe’s need to leverage China to counter American excesses.

This is a debatable visualization of the future. America and Europe are transatlantic allies. While Trump has questioned NATO’s relevance and bullied Europe on defense budgets, NATO is apparently functioning normally. NATO counters Russia, but with strengthening Russia-China strategic ties and America intent on curbing China’s power, a China-Europe tandem against America would put the transatlantic alliance in jeopardy, an eventuality for which Europe is unprepared.

Click here to read the full article on Metro UN (paywall). 

Reports indicate that the United States and China are closing in on a trade deal that will block new tariffs on Chinese goods entering the United States. But, as we saw at the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, in late February, nothing is finished until signatures are put to paper—in this case, a formal trade agreement. It is a self-conscious hallmark of Trump's diplomatic style that unpredictability is a key element of negotiation, and wrong-footing the adversary is just part of the way in which one wins the best possible deal.

Assuming the Americans and the Chinese come to an agreement, terms will almost certainly include arrangements for the Chinese to purchase more American goods—from soybeans to Boeings—with the express goal of narrowing the trade deficit between the two countries. Similarly, the press has speculated about arrangements to prevent, or at least minimize, Chinese currency manipulation, resulting in fairer and more transparent pricing.

Click here to read the full article on Stratfor Worldview.