Africa and The Middle East

A nearly weeklong blockage of the Suez Canal revealed a new chokepoint for global supply chains already strained by pandemic-related shipping bottlenecks , analysts said on Wednesday, suggesting diversification, automation and digitalization could help make supply chains more resilient. When one of the world’s largest shipping container vessels, the Ever Given, lodged itself last week in the Suez Canal, it cut off a key passageway for global trade. The canal has re-opened, but a backlog of ships passing through could...

Efforts to liberalize trade across Africa should move the U.S. to eschew bilateral talks and engage with the continent as a whole, according to veteran trade analyst and negotiator Stephen Lande, who spoke with Inside U.S. Trade about what he thinks a new approach to U.S.-Africa trade should look like. Lande in the 1970s and 1980s served as assistant USTR and a negotiator for the U.S. on trade agreements in Asia, the Middle East and the Caribbean. He is...

Congress and the administration should start working now to renew Trade Promotion Authority so the U.S. is able to pursue future trade goals, such as concluding negotiations with the United Kingdom, opening new markets in Africa and potentially even rejoining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Tuesday. The fast-track authority for trade agreements, which mandates an up-or-down vote by Congress, is set to expire at the end of June. It was last...

Prospects for renewing the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a 20-year-old U.S. preferential trade agreement due to expire in 2025, look stronger with President Biden in office, analysts say, though the trade preference program could be significantly modified if the U.S. continues a shift toward reciprocal trade agreements on the continent. The new administration has yet to lay out a plan for trade policy with Africa, but has left open the possibility of continuing talks with Kenya on a bilateral...

Plurilateral negotiations play an important role in the World Trade Organization, allowing members to move forward on important issues and keep the organization relevant and responsive, the U.S., European Union and others argued on Tuesday, defending plurilateral talks after India and South Africa raised concerns about their legal status at the WTO. The question of the plurilateral negotiations, formally known as joint statement initiatives, was taken up at the WTO General Council meeting this week. About two-thirds of the WTO’s...

The push by many countries -- including the U.S. -- to conclude plurilateral agreements at the World Trade Organization is “legally inconsistent” with WTO rules and principles, India and South Africa argued in a new paper, insisting there is a “fundamental requirement for multilateralism” in Geneva. Many in Geneva have argued that plurilateral negotiations, also known as joint statement initiatives, are one of the few ways to make progress at the WTO because the multilateral negotiating arm has largely failed...

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on Monday was officially appointed the new director-general of the World Trade Organization, pledging to tackle the pandemic, advance negotiations on curbing fisheries subsidies, move the needle on dispute settlement reform and lay the groundwork for a successful ministerial conference as her initial priorities. Okonjo-Iweala, of Nigeria, takes the reins of the beleaguered organization months after she was anointed the consensus candidate following the Biden administration’s removal of the U.S. block of her selection mandated by the prior...

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is set to make history on Monday as the World Trade Organization’s first African and first woman director-general, but the deep divides and significant crises facing the organization are likely to put her reformer reputation to the test from the start. Since entering the leadership race last year, Okonjo-Iweala has been a favorite to take the reins of the troubled organization. From the pandemic to the paralyzed Appellate Body to a stalled negotiating function, though, the challenges facing...

House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) hopes U.S. trade agreements with the United Kingdom and Kenya will be concluded and sent to Capitol Hill for review this year, he said on Tuesday. The Trump administration launched trade negotiations with London and Nairobi last year under the tenets of the 2015 Trade Promotion Authority law, which provides the administration with objectives to follow in negotiations and allows the White House to submit deals to Congress for up-or-down votes...