According to popular lore, China is on the cusp of assuming the mantle of global economic leadership from the United States. In the minds of many folks, the U.S.-led global financial crisis-cum-global recession is hard and indisputable evidence of this seminal shift. As the dust settles from the crisis, China’s … Continue Reading…
WASHINGTON — It is admittedly difficult to explain to Americans why they should be excited about Ireland’s approval of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty on Friday. When told that the EU will run more smoothly under the new treaty, Americans are likely to want to know instead whether this means … Continue Reading…
Besides resolving to clamp down on bankers’ bonuses, the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh produced two major results. The first was a pledge to expand emerging markets’ say and sway in the IMF by increasing their quota by five percentage points to 43 percent of the total. The U.S.-sponsored idea will … Continue Reading…
Many investors and policy makers have dismissed Europe as a spent and aging power, a region hardly relevant to the world economy. A decade of tepid economic growth seems to support that claim, especially juxtaposed against robust performance from Brazil, Russia, India and China — the BRIC nations — in … Continue Reading…
In his speech in Berlin last year, presidential hopeful Barack Obama stated, “America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic.”
Bridge-building will be sorely needed in the disintegrating global economy, … Continue Reading…
With the world on the cusp of a serious recession, last weekend’s G20 summit of the leaders of the richest industrial and emerging economies pledged to maintain an open global economy in the face of the economic downturn. In … Continue Reading…
When the subprime crisis started to turn into a full-blown financial crisis for the United States, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück claimed that the crisis was principally a U.S. problem and that Germany’s banking system was robust enough to cope with potential losses. Unfortunately, Mr. Steinbrück was wrong … Continue Reading…
Making progress in multilateral trade negotiations involving more than 150 countries is very difficult. Negotiations require exchanges – offering something for what you want. Given the widely discrepant wealth of developed and developing countries, the poorest countries must, in relative terms, offer a great deal more.
Negotiations can advance because the … Continue Reading…
By Joe Guinan and Nicola Lightner
The Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization is now dead. Like the Monty Python parrot, it has passed on, is no more, has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet … Continue Reading…
Despite the strains on the transatlantic relationship caused by events like the Iraq war—as evidenced in public opinion studies, like GMF’s Transatlantic Trends—optimism is rising about improved relations with a new U.S. administration in 2009. But underlying the political aspect of the relationship has been a flourishing economic … Continue Reading…