'Powerful' - Silvia Federici It's in our food, our cosmetics, our fuel and our bodies. Palm oil, found in half of supermarket products, has shaped our world. Max Haiven uncovers how the gears of capitalism are literally and metaphorically lubricated by this ubiquitous elixir. From its origins in West Africa to today's Southeast Asian palm oil superpowers, Haiven's sweeping, experimental narrative takes us on a global journey that includes looted treasures, the American system of mass incarceration, the history of modern art and the industrialisation of war. Beyond simply calling for more consumer boycotts, he argues for recognising in palm oil humanity's profound potential to shape our world beyond racial capitalism and neo-colonial dispossession. One part history, one part dream, one part theory, one part montage, this kaleidoscopic and urgent book asks us to recognise the past in the present and to seize the power to make a better world.

The most important dimension of globalization in the last thirty years and especially since 2000 has been the dramatic increase of developing country participation in world trade and the emergence of a number of powers such as Brazil, China and India that are playing an important role in the global economy and in the WTO. But many other developing countries continue to struggle to transform their economies, handicapped by institutional constraints and protection against their exports both in developed and developing country markets. This volume examines the main factors for developing country trade performance in the last thirty years, their own trade policies, market access issues they face, and their increasingly more effective participation in the WTO and the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. The last part addresses the future role of the WTO in the international trade system in connection with the challenges it faces from the multitude of preferential trade agreements such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the US and the EU; and recommends an action program for the more effective participation of developing countries in the world trade.

This book examines an event that never happened - a trade war between the US and the EC in respect of the civil aircraft builder, Airbus Industrie. By understanding this trade dispute, the author casts light on broader issues of international cooperation by focusing on the bilateral trade negotiations that took place between 1979 and 1992. He considers that role played by aerospace firms, the GATT and the transatlantic alliance in shaping this cooperative outcome.

Analyzing South-South trade in a theoretical and political framework, this book looks at the development of this trade in manufactured goods since the 1960s. Problems and potentials of South-South trade in a development context are highlighted through a number of case studies including the export of manufactured goods from Togo, Nicaragua and Malaysia, Zimbabwe's export of manufacturers to Zambia, and India's export of capital goods to Tanzania. This leads to an assessment of the possible future role of South-South trade in furthering Third-World development.

This book examines the recent controversy between international trade and environmental policies. It analyses the use of environmentally-motivated trade policies, national environmental policies, and their relationships with the rules governing trade, critically examining proposals rule reform. A theoretical framework is provided for a consideration of the efficiency of environmental trade policies and an evaluation made of empirical links between environmental policy differences and trade flows. Concerns of developing countries over environmentally-motivated market access restrictions are highlighted in considering international trade rules and the agreements reached at UNCED.

The current restructuring of the world-economy under global capitalism has further integrated international trade and production. It thus has brought to the fore the key role of commodity chains in the relationships of capital, labor, and states. Commodity chains are most simply defined as the link between successive processes of manufacturing that result in a final product available for individual consumption. Each production site in the chain involves organizing the acquisition of necessary raw materials plus semifinished inputs, the recruitment of labor power and its provisioning, arranging transportation to the next site, and the construction of modes of distribution (via markets and transfers) and consumption. The contributors to this volume explore and elaborate the global commodity chains (GCCs) approach, which reformulates the basic conceptual categories for analyzing varied patterns of global organization and change. The GCC framework allows the authors to pose questions about development issues, past and present, that are not easily handled by previous paradigms and to more adequately forge the macro-micro links between processes that are generally assumed to be discretely contained within global, national, and local units of analysis. The paradigm that GCCs embody is a network-centered, historical approach that probes above and below the level of the nation-state to better analyze structure and change in the contemporary world.

This volume is a collection of the author's past and recent research. It concentrates on some topics that continue to be neglected in mainstream trade theory, but which have grown in empirical relevance as the decades have passed and allow us to broaden our world view. These include adding multinational firms and a major role for the demand side of general equilibrium to our conventional portfolio of models.Part I in the volume focuses on multinational firms and the incorporation of endogenous location and ownership choices into general-equilibrium trade models. A particular emphasis, repeatedly confirmed in empirical studies, is on horizontal firms that replicate activities across borders. Two chapters on the vertical integration versus outsourcing decision reveal the non-excludable property of knowledge-based assets.Part II focuses on the demand side of general equilibrium, arguing and showing empirically that non-homothetic preferences, which give an important role to per capita income, help explain many of the empirical puzzles that trade economists keep trying to explain only from the production side of general equilibrium.Part III is eclectic, but the chapters in this section share the common thread of showing how distortions and allowing trade in factors of production both modify traditional policy ideas and also create additional sources of gains from trade.

What policies are feasible today and likely to be effective in developing markets and reforming agricultural trade in the 1990s? Outstanding scholars from several disciplines and from various countries evaluate the major alternative policies and principal scenarios for regional trade and market development in the current global economic and political environment. This text assesses prospects for a marketplace strategy of agricultural development, revealing a considerable range of opinion on the subject. Students, scholars, institutional analysts, and policymakers concerned with international political economics, agricultural policy, international trade, the politics of developing countries, and U.S. foreign policy will find this a practical guide for understanding the critical role of public policy in the organizing of efficient markets. This study points to the potential impacts of policy reforms in the USSR, Eastern Europe, and developing nations; describes current practices in agricultural trade development; offers regional perspectives on agricultural trade and market development; and outlines a broad range of opportunities and initiatives that may arise in the coming years. This useful survey and expert assessment ends with a brief listing of some of the most important and useful materials for understanding the critical issues and opportunities confronting the United States in the next few years in the areas of agricultural trade and market development.

Subsidies and countervail have been the subject of much attention in recent decades. In this book, the editors have selected seminal contributions to the literature on the economics of subsidies and countervailing duties in international trade, their role in trade agreements and their treatment in the GATT/WTO system.

Trade, especially international trade, is an important component of business that can be instrumental to the prosperity of a country or region. The various economic expansions into the South American region, in particular, have become increasingly scrutinized for their industrial and capital policies and how they impact the local communities as a whole. Open and Innovative Trade Opportunities for Latin America and the Caribbean is a collection of innovative research on the methods and applications of international trade relations within Latin American countries. While highlighting topics including international relations, local governance, and global economics, this book is ideally designed for entrepreneurs, government officials, business owners, researchers, policymakers, academicians, students, and international business professionals. Topics Covered The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to: Bilateral Relationships Business Partnership Business Policy Foreign Policy Global Business Global Economics International Relations International Trade Local Governance Social Development

All of the papers included in this volume were presented at a conference held at Lancaster University and were subsequently revised in the light of the comments received from Professor Bhagwati and others. The material in the essays is easily accessible to both professional economists and policy-makers. This volume brings together ten essays on topical issues in international economics. Written by experts in the relevant fields each of the essays reviews the current debate on chosen issues and provides a basis for further research. Each of the essays relate to policy issues on which Professor Bhagwati has written extensively.

As the United States slowly disengages from the Middle East and Europe faces internal challenges, a new actor is quietly exerting greater influence across North Africa: China. Beijing's growing footprint in North Africa encompasses, but is not limited to, trade, infrastructure development, ports, shipping, financial cooperation, tourism and manufacturing. It is continuing to expand its co-operation with North African countries, not only in the economic and cultural spheres, but also those of diplomacy and defence. This engagement with North Africa relates to the key aim of President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which wants to connect Asia, Africa and Europe and sees potential in North Africa's strategic geographic location. This book is the first to analyse China's role in North Africa. It comprises of five leading country experts - Anouar Boukhars, Yahia Zoubir, Sarah Yerkes, Tareki Magresi and Nael Shama - who examine the various socio-economic, political and security aspects of China's relationship with Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. The book explores how China is displaying a development model that seeks to combine authoritarianism with economic growth, a model and that has an eager audience among regimes across the MENA region. It reveals how the China-North Africa relationship fits within the broader dynamics of increasing China-US rivalry. In doing so, contributors explain why China's growing role in North Africa is likely to have far-reaching economic and geopolitical consequences for both countries in the region and around the world.

This book illuminates the decision-making process of the U.S. Senate by examining the Trade Agreements Act of 1979. The purpose of Jerome's study is threefold: first, to discuss the legislative process dealing with the act, and thereby to document the particular nature of Senate decision-making. Second, the author reviews current decision-making theories and examines various points of his case study to see how reality conforms with the theories. Finally, he suggests revisions of the decision-making theories. Jerome creates three broad theoretical categories to analyze the Senate decision-making process: The first stresses a structural approach; the second emphasizes factors that influence the decision; and the third emphasizes specific behavioral patterns. Over the course of the decision-making process, the author argues, no one dimension is necessarily more important than another. He develops a model that views the process as a time line or braided rope with each of the three dimensions comprising one cord of the rope. By slicing through this rope the decision process can be examined at various points, emphasizing the strengths and weaknesses in each of the individual theories. Because Jerome's conceptual framework is based on an insider's perspective, his work will be of considerable interest to political scientists studying decision-making theories and the legislative process. Economists interested in trade policy will also find this book useful.

Innovation and international trade are two important drivers of economic growth. These two activities perform differently under different types of market competition.This book - a collection of several important research publications by Larry D Qiu - discusses innovation and international trade, separately and jointly, under imperfect competition. Through exploring these topics, they offer different perspectives on these issues. The selected works also provide clear and strong implications on trade policies and intellectual property rights protection.

China boasts a long history of foreign trade. As early as the pre-Qin period, residents of the country began to ship silk and other merchandise on outbound voyages. From the 2nd century BCE on, China has been connected to the rest of the world via the Overland Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road initiated in the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty.Trade relations between China and other regions in the world have been developing gradually and continuously. Trade has contributed to deepening economic and cultural exchanges between China and other countries. While benefiting the whole of humankind, Chinese civilization has also absorbed the achievements of other civilizations, allowing China and other countries to experience mutual benefits and advance together.This is the first volume in a series of books retelling the arduous development of China's foreign trade. It covers ancient times, recording China's foreign trade from the pre-Qin period to the early period of the Qing Dynasty.

All of the GCC countries-Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates-are undergoing historic socio-economic transitions. They are facing enormous strains on public finances and challenging economic outlooks, due to fluctuating oil prices, demographic pressures, high unemployment rates, and a lack of economic diversification. These countries also are likely to feel the rising impact of climate change, and global policies to deal with it, over the coming decades. In addition, seemingly unstoppable shifts in the long-standing international order, notably the rise of China and uncertainties about U.S. leadership, have potentially serious implications for the Middle East and beyond. This policy-oriented book of essays by noted scholars and experts considers the key trends shaping Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic, to climate change, economic disruptions, demographics and other domestic concerns, and shifts in the global order. The book's chapters address such questions as: How will global megatrends impact the GCC? How can GCC states adjust and diversify their economies to meet the dual challenges of fluctuating oil prices and climate change? How can these states adjust their labor markets to absorb and support women and youth? How will inter GCC disagreements impact the region moving forward? And how will GCC relations with international actors shift in the coming years? This timely book, with its comprehensive analyses and policy recommendations, will be of interest to a wide range of readers interested in the GCC region, including policymakers, academics, and researchers at think tanks and nongovernmental organizations.

The post-Cold War era has seen an unprecedented move towards more legalization in international cooperation and a growth of third-party dispute settlement systems. WTO panels, the Appellate Body and investor-state dispute settlement cases have received increasing attention beyond the core trade and investment constituencies within governments. Scrutiny by business, civil society, academia, and trade and investment experts has been on the rise. This book asks whether we observe a transformation or a demise of existing institutions and mechanisms to adjudicate disputes over trade or investment. It makes a contribution to the question in which direction international economic dispute settlement is heading in times of change, uncertainty and increasing economic nationalism. In order to do so, it brings together chapters written by leading researchers and experts in law and political science to address the challenges of settling disputes in the global economy and to sketch possible scenarios ahead of us.

South Africa's future is increasingly tied up with that of India. While trade and investment between the two countries is intensifying, they share long-standing historical ties and have much in common: apart from cricket, colonialism and Gandhi, both countries are important players in the global South. As India emerges as a major economic power, the need to understand these links becomes ever more pressing. Can the two countries enter balanced forms of exchange? What forms of transnational political community between these two regions have yet to be researched and understood? The first section of South Africa and India traces the range of historical connection between the two countries. The second section explores unconventional comparisons that offer rich ground on which to build original areas of study. This innovative book looks to a post-American world in which the global South will become ever more important. Within this context, the Indian Ocean arena itself and South Africa and India in particular move to the fore. The book's main contribution lies in the approaches and methods offered by its wide range of contributors for thinking about this set of circumstances.

After the 2008-9 global financial crisis, reforms to promote stability, social inclusion, and sustainability were promised but not delivered. As a result, the global economic situation, marred by inequality, volatility, and climate breakdown, remains dysfunctional. Now, the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic offers us a second chance. Kevin Gallagher and Richard Kozul-Wright argue that we must grasp it by implementing sweeping reforms to how we govern global money, finance, and trade. Without global leaders prepared to boldly rewrite the rules to promote a prosperous, just, and sustainable post-Covid world economic order - a Bretton Woods moment for the twenty-first century - we risk being engulfed by climate chaos and political dysfunction. This book provides a blueprint for change that no one interested in the future of our planet can afford to miss.

Origin Management describes a holistic approach that allows internationally operating companies to benefit from reduced import duty rates within Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Through the creation of a single, auditable, and global platform, companies are enabled to successfully claim preferential origin and sustain, review and audit preferential treatment claims. Seeking to provide a comprehensive treatment of origin management for a professional audience, this book outlines the underlying theoretical concepts and legislative frameworks, and presents practical implications and guidelines for a successful origin management program as part of a strategic sourcing initiative. The authors advocate an approach that involves sharing and distributing information and resources throughout the company and the supply chain, resulting in competitive advantages, synergies, and a central information point for all origin associated issues.

Faced with evolving trade and health dynamics, this book presents a historical, conceptual, and empirical examination of public health and medical procurement in international trade law at a time of emergency. The work argues that the current trade framework is outdated and must be redesigned to suit the new needs of the 21st century. It identifies critical problems within the current international trade system that prevents it from effectively responding to pandemics, as well as to the emerging digital economy. Based on the analysis, the study puts forward specific suggestions to upgrade the current trade rules framework to prepare for future international public health emergencies and further digitalization of health services. The book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of International Trade Law, Public Health Law and Medical Law.

International Trade, Labor Relations, and Bargaining Power: International Strawberry Commodity Networks examines power in the commercial food system through the history of always available strawberries. Applying an interdisciplinary approach to case studies on strawberry production and sales in Mexico, Spain, and the United States, the author untangles the symbiotic relationships between the economic boom and labor strife in the sector. By comparing workers’ struggles in the sector, he develops a novel model of workplace bargaining power in which the process of dignity catalyzes change. Since international trade in strawberries began three decades ago, the sector’s growth has paralleled the rise of retailer dominance of food sales. Highlighting inequitable gains from the sales boom, workers have organized mass strikes, boycotts, and pressure campaigns. The divergent results ranged from ephemeral acknowledgments of workers’ concerns to the establishment of union collective bargaining and steadily improving working conditions. Grounded in extensive research, the book provides fresh analytical approaches to understanding the social dimensions of international trade and workplace bargaining power. The book unpacks the relationship between poor working conditions and economic growth by applying a new method, international commodity network analysis, which builds on prior global supply chain approaches. It explains differences in workers’ initiatives to improve employment conditions by identifying the process of dignity in the creation of solidarity.

For years, China’s rapid economic transformation was hailed as a successful project that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. However, in recent times, the Chinese narrative has taken a more negative turn in the eyes of the West. Much of this has to do with the US perception about the role of the Chinese state in its economy and its military build-up, especially in the South China Sea. There’s no question, China’s complex economy can be difficult to understand. Information is often unclear and incomplete, and its data are not always reliable. However, this book presents the reader with a clear picture of China’s economy and how it compares to other advanced economies, mainly the United States. The book unwraps the key features and structures of China’s economy. Moreover, it examines and shows the similarities and differences in comparison with other like economies. In that effort, it underscores the differences by evaluating their benefits as well as their disadvantages, against the backdrop of China’s incomplete transition to a market economy. This along with its governance structure becomes the crucial components shaping the way key stakeholders will act and react to opportunities and incentives as that economy evolves. The book supplements the definition of globalization for the academic, the student, the professional and anyone else interested in its positive and negative effects. It is also a good fit for anyone who wants to understand China’s three elements of political economy: global trade, political power and its image on the global stage.

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars Britain found itself faced with a stagnant economy. Economist David Ricardo believed that the full re-integration of Britain into the world market would allow for both capital accumulation and population growth, and used arguments that anticipate ideas entertained in modern contributions to the theory of economic growth and development. However, several of these arguments have not yet been translated into the language of modern classical economics. Ricardo's Theory of Growth and Accumulation seeks to overcome this striking lacuna. The latest entry in the Graz Schumpeter lecture series, this text explores and elaborates Ricardo's arguments and the models utilized by those who subsequently followed in support of his work. The Ricardian system is first examined through a one-sector economy, following Kaldor's model, and a two-sector economy, following Pasinetti's model. These building blocks are developed through the exploration of a small open economy, which allows an analysis of the impact of international trade in exceedingly simple circumstances. This discussion expands further by considering the world economy. More sophisticated variants of the two-sector model are presented, in which commodity prices are endogenously determined by the trading interplay amongst several countries. A final analysis makes Ricardo's case by introducing accumulation in the world economy. This book is of interest to students and scholars of Ricardo, classical economics, and - more broadly - growth theory, the theory of international economics, and globalization. The author was keen to render the analytical parts compelling to the historian and the historical parts compelling to the theorist.