What I am up to

There have been so many things happening that I am way behind in putting them on the page. I may not be remembering the right order. Let me try!

My 2024 students in International Economic Studies - we have fun in the class (well, truth be told, so far I am, but I hope by the end of the terms these fantastic young people will enjoy it too!)

The Consolidated publication on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity was released, and we had an inspiring and motivating discussion at the gathering in Tokyo on 1 March 2024 organized by KAS Japan, NUS (ISAS) Singapore. Most of the contributors to the volume attended, and the discussions delved into critical areas such as #supplychains, the #cleaneconomy, #politicaldevelopments, and their collective impact on the #IPEF. Insightful views were provided by experts from #EU, including their engagement with the Indo-Pacific and the IPEF.

This is one of the presentations I gave on Gender equality and RTAs.

It was so rewarding to be engaged with a group of dedicated and passionate participants from a number of least-developed countries during September. We had eight online sessions with guest speakers and one session with participants presenting on different topics. I enclose our schedule of sessions below for information. Hopefully, we will be able to continue with these advanced masterclasses on trade and gender in LDCs. Go Champions!

So I had the pleasure of giving two guest lectures to a small group of Masters students at Waikato University. One lecture was on Trade-based industrial policy and the second one was a Conversation with ChatGPT on the impacts of trade. It was great fun!

I am happy to share the link to my blog “FEW THOUGHTS ON RESHORING, NEARSHORING AND PROSPECTS FOR CROATIA’S PARTICIPATION IN VALUE CHAINS” published recently at the Institute for Euro-Asian Studies at the Faculty of Business and Economics, Zagreb (my alma mater). I welcome your comments!

It was a pleasure to host Professor Simon Evenett and Professor Ian Coxhead for the ARTNeT webinar on Must do Better: Trade & Industrial Policy and the SDGs. This session presented the 30th Global Trade Alert Report under the same title authored by Simon J. Evenett and Johannes Fritz.

Many governments reckon their trade policies promote environmental improvements, the clean energy transition, improved conditions for workers, and other aspects of sustainable development. Yet many critics and promoters of trade reform pour cold water on the notion that commercial policy should target Sustainable Development Goals. (SDGs).

To take this discussion forward, this Global Trade Alert Report offers a factual assessment of what commercial policy has contributed to the SDGs since the Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development came into effect in 2016 and how much more it could contribute from here on. Also, the Report tackles head-on the apparent tension between openness and advancing SDGs and puts forward suggestions to resolve it. Professor Evenett’s presentation. Professor Coxhead's presentation. Video recording of the session.

It was a great experience to participate in the Group on Services events at the Senior Officials Meetings of APEC in Palm Springs, USA in February 2003. I contributed to the discussions on Trade in services and women which was very rewarding and aligned with my order work (see other entries on this page). The Private Public Dialogue organized by Sherry Stephenson and me on Essential Service: Achieving Better Policies toward Logistics-related Services was well attended and harvested useful recommendations to move our project even closer to a successful finish later this year.

Recording of this session is available here.

I am looking forward to moderating the upcoming ARTNeT webinar on TRADE WINS AND MISSES OF 2022 AND THE LOOK AHEAD. 2022 has been the third year with the pandemic still very much present in many countries, but also the year of return of inflation, rising poverty, wars and a continued worsening of climate change impacts.

But what about international trade? On the positive side of the ledger, the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference finally took place last June and ended successfully with a Geneva Package of important results, including the multilateral agreement on fisheries subsidies after 2 decades of negotiations. Several regional trade agreements were signed or put in force. On the negative side of the ledger, several countries continued to engage in trade conflicts, and even more resorted to use of restrictive export and other trade measures. The use of trade policy for broad and non-trade objectives has started to become the new normal.

This session invites 3 speakers to provide their personal views on trade wins and misses in 2022 from the perspective of the EU, APEC and developing economies. They are also asked to look ahead into the 2023 and tell us what they wish for trade next year.

Please first register to get the zoom link- http://bit.ly/3gnXip8

United Nations Association of New Zealand Wellington Branch is organizing a webinar on Climate Responsible Trade and Investment for Sustainable Development (24 Nov 2022). Information on the webinar (the speakers, registration etc) is here. The webinar will be recorded and I will post the link to the recording when available.

United Nations ESCAP team working on trade, investment and innovation produces Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Report which always picks a topic of great relevance for the economies in the region and beyond. 2023 Report will attempt to answer many difficult questions about contributions and possible drawbacks of digital trade and investment to sustainable development. I am pleased to have participated in the expert group meeting (14-16 Nov 2022) discussing with the team about the concepts, scope, focus, messages, methodology, data and more. I am confident the Report will be a valuable reference to both policymakers and annalists.

I am pleased and proud Sherry Stephenson and I got to contribute to this year’s issue of the PECC State of the Region Report 2022-2023, authored by Eduardo Pedrosa and Michael Plummer. The Box (see image below) we wrote is based on a multi-year APEC project on logistics services. The background paper produced as one component of that project is available here.

So, once in a while, people are allowed to have fun with the stuff they normally treat more seriously. Hope you will find this video fits that category!

“Making Change Happen” at HARVARD. I was privileged to be invited to speak about my experience in development work in the UN ESCAP and provide my insights on an elite-citizen gap in views on the legitimacy of the UN and other international organizations and the role of this gap deepening in the rise of populist governance. We also touched upon the importance of understanding who the stakeholders are and what are their developmental needs. And, of course, on how to embark on the UN professional career. I was happy to recommend the 17 Rooms podcast and Gambling on Development by Stefan Dercon to the students.

I provided some brief comments in a pre-recorded video to the recent CUTS CITEE roundtable on Trade Policy India Needs on 14 October 2022. They are also available in this commentary.

I am honoured and excited about teaching International Economics Issues at Waikato University this semester. It is a 3rd-year undergraduate class and I hope we will have fun going through a packed syllabus. While there is no prescribed textbook, we will lean on several chapters from Krugman, Obstfeld, and Melitz (12th ed) and Feenstra and Taylor (5th ed) padded with MANY super-interesting podcasts, blogs, and appropriate (non-technical) articles). It will be a combined in-person and Zoom-based course and I am hoping for more in-person interactions as we move through the semester.

Mapping #noodles with RTAs in Asia is getting messier. This is an interim map while I am finding time to do a commentary (hopefully soon). It includes only major regional groupings, The image includes proper regional trade agreements (AANZFTA, RCEP, CPTPP) and regional cooperation initiatives (APEC, IPEF). Note that Brunei Darussalam, Chile, and Malaysia still have to ratify/enforce their participation in CPTPP and similarly Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines for RCEP.

CUTS International is organizing a session on Future of the WTO or WTO of the Future on 23 June and I am happy to be joining the panel featuring Pascal Lamy, Amita Batra, Mark Linscott, and Deborah Elm expertly moderated by Pradeep Mehta. #WTO Watch the video of the event.

2022 edition of the UNCTAD course Trade and Gender Linkages with a Focus on the Least Developed Countries started on Monday 13 June. I am co-facilitating with Vanika Sharma and we both are excited to collaborate on this awesome program again. #womeninartnet A number of participants joined in the last online session (16 July) and this photo was taken as a memento!

I am so happy (and anxious) to join Cecilia Malmström and Alan Wm. Wolff to talk about Will the WTO survive amid Russia's war and other stresses on global trade? in the next session of Trade Winds @PIIE on 15 June. You can watch the episode here.

You can watch the recordings of the two ARTNeT webinars I moderated in May 2022. One was on Gender Impact Analysis of Trade - What Is It and Why Do We Need It? featuring Georgina Wainwright-Kemdirim, Global Affairs Canada and Jane Korinek, OECD and another on Deepening Linkages Between South Asia and Southeast Asia featuring Nora Dihel, World Bank; Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås, Council on Economic Policies and Mustafizur Rahman, Centre for Policy Dialogue.

Along with Matteo Fiorini (OECD), I was invited to participate in a workshop organized by Paul Baker (International Economics) for Indonesia and to comment on the use of indicators on services trade restrictiveness for improving trade policy formulation, including in the trade negotiations. My slides are attached.