WTO
What next for UK trade relations with the EU?
In line with its cautious approach, UK Labour said very little of note on the European Union during the recent election campaign. However, Sir Keir Starmer did state unequivocally…
Fibs, squibs, and trading digs
Book review: Why Politicians Lie About Trade … and What You Need to Know About It, by Dmitry Grozoubinski (Canbury Press, 2024)Trade policy tends to fly under the radar most of…
Economic diplomacy: To market, to market, with China
Trading up
Australia’s international economic engagement kicked off in 2003 with then foreign minister Alexander Downer telling his Cabinet colleagues that he was set to claim…
Economic diplomacy: Pulling the right global value chain
Stepping up
Late last month, the Albanese government took important steps towards dealing with two of the most debated developments in international economic relations since…
Economic diplomacy: Labor’s green security state rises
Tunnel vision
Last Sunday inner city Sydney residents got their first chance to walk inside a 24-kilometre labyrinth of intersecting underground road junction tunnels, which is…
A return to old-school mercantilism?
Talk is cheap. In the international system, states closely monitor each other’s actions and rhetoric becomes secondary. With the acceleration of great power competition, states…
Foreign policy China-style: beyond protocol and alcohol
There are phases in international relations when diplomacy between some countries is unfortunately reduced to protocol and alcohol. Such phases are never entirely intentional. No…
Economic diplomacy: Arming up for war and trade
Guns AND butter
It took a Second World War general-turned-president in Dwight Eisenhower to provide one of the most evocative articulations of the classic government spending…
Indonesia’s uncertain climb up the nickel value chain
Indonesia has historically had limited success with industrial policy. That may now be changing, with recent interventionist policies targeting the nickel sector suggesting…
How will China’s punitive trade restrictions against Australia end?
Recent reports of an imminent meeting between Australia’s and China’s trade ministers have raised hopes of progress toward the removal of the trade restrictions that China imposed…