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Brazilian challenge to existing structural power frameworks this chapter will contextualize Brazil’s shift in identity to ‘global trader’ (Barbosa and Panelli, 1994 ), exploring what this has meant in terms of trade policy on a regional, South–South and global level. From the early 1980s it became apparent that international trade insertion would play an important role in a country’s ability to pursue its own national development and maintain the space it needed to preserve autonomy in the regional and global sphere. Indeed, these became major themes in Brazilian
Introduction One of the most exciting of the developments that has emerged in the institutional sphere from the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations is the focus on ensuring closer adherence by members to the WTO code through the newly created Trade Policy Review Mechanism [TPRM]. And one of the most teasing of questions in relation to the TPRM is
approving mandates for new agreements and concluding deals after negotiation. It defends its markets against unfair trade practices as a single entity. Finally, the EU (in theory at least) negotiates trade agreements with ‘one voice’, with the European Commission representing its member states during talks and at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Since the 1970s, the UK institutions that once dealt with these trade policy functions have evolved to become somewhat vestigial organs of the state. Rather than negotiate trade deals on behalf of the UK, or set unilateral
governance, or poverty reduction. The hard-line neoliberals in charge called it ‘cleaning the stables’ from the McNamara era. While working in the Trade Policy Division, I was asked to write a report on how East Asian countries had promoted exports. When I explained that they had integrated export promotion with import substitution like ‘the two wings of the same bird’, I was told that
migration and trade policies, Europeans have increasingly opted for a closing-inwards of the nation state, calling into question the viability of the European project itself. The Brexit referendum, in June 2016, provided a clear example of this. Politics on the periphery has taken a similarly illiberal turn, with more violent consequences. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte boasts of carrying out extrajudicial killings and threatens to kill corrupt state officials, and he has launched a bloody war on drugs, for which he has been
This book contributes to the construction of an integrated analysis of Brazilian foreign policy by focusing on the country's insertion into both the regional and global system over the roughly twenty-five years through to the end of Dilma's first term as president in 2014. An attempt is made to order the discussion through exploration of a series of themes, which are further broken down into key component parts. The first section presents the context, with chapters on institutional structures and the tactical behaviours exhibited by the country's diplomacy, which will be used to guide the analysis in subsequent chapters. The second focuses on issues, taking in trade policies, the rise of Brazilian foreign direct investment, security policy and multilateralism. Key relationships are covered in the final section, encompassing Latin America, the Global South, the US and China. A central contradiction is the clear sense that Brazilian foreign policy makers want to position their country as leader, but are almost pathologically averse to explicitly stating this role or accepting the implicit responsibilities. The recurrent theme is the rising confusion about what Brazil's international identity is, what it should be, and what this means Brazil can and should do. A repeated point made is that foreign policy is an important and often overloooked aspect of domestic policies. The Dilma presidency does hold an important place in the analytical narrative of this book, particularly with respect to the chapters on trade, Brazil Inc., security policy and bilateral relations with the US and China.
Introduction The Trade Policy Review Mechanism [TPRM] has been functioning since 1989, and more than some twenty-three developing countries have now been the subject of review. There is therefore ample opportunity to gauge the level of transparency achieved through the TPRM in relation to the trade policies and practices of the developing country
Introduction The trade policies, practices and reviews of the European Communities [EC] raise questions for enforcement – particularly in the light of the stature of the EC in international trade relations, and its complex organisational structure. This chapter focuses less on EC trade policies and practices, which are well covered elsewhere, 2
9 Economic Partnership Agreements and Africa: losing friends and failing to influence Christopher Stevens Both the Euro-ÂAfrica Summit of December 2007 in Lisbon and its successor in Tripoli of November 2010 illustrate Europe’s difficulty in marrying its rhetorical goal of a strategic partnership with Africa and its trade policy towards the continent. The lofty aims of the Lisbon Summit were lost in a bad tempered row over Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), given that it took place one month before what the EU billed as the ‘ultimate deadline’ for interim
of foreign investment, GATS, which concerns market access for and treatment of service providers, and the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM), the WTO mechanism whereby the trade policies of Members are subject to regular scrutiny by other WTO Members. Finally, this chapter examines in some depth the draft MAI, the text which emerged from a failed attempt by the OECD to negotiate a comprehensive multilateral