ISDS Case Map
Asia
Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda said the bank would help promote regional trade liberalization as part of the institution's mid- and long-term strategies.
“A lot of these bilateral deals have nothing to do with economics. Instead, they [Asian Development Bank's members] are mostly doing it for diplomatic reasons, including efforts to gain access to natural resources.”
The European Union is exploring the prospect of free trade deals with Asian nations once the current round of world trade talks is over, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said on Tuesday.
It's always wise to have a Plan B. As the US urges progress in the “Doha round” of trade talks, it is also chasing bilateral trade deals across east Asia.
With the world's two big multi-country trade liberalization talks stumbling or moribund, Canada's new government should fire up action on bilateral and smaller regional free-trade deals.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) this week said the U.S. should drop partners in free trade agreement negotiations if talks on those agreements are not progressing.
A proliferation of bilateral free trade deals in Asia risks creating a "spaghetti bowl" of overlapping measures that could actually harm companies, the head of the Asia Development Bank (ADB) said today.
East Asia should set up a unified region-wide free trade pact to help boost trade and investment and further promote regional economic integration, the president of the Asian Development Bank said yesterday.
This UNDP paper is divided into four main parts. Parts I, II and III examine the
phenomenon of FTA proliferation and the underlying forces and
motivations of key players at work. Part IV builds on the analysis to
address the impact of the FTA explosion on human development policy
choices in key areas such as agriculture, textiles, rules of origin,
intellectual property, trade in services, and investment.
The proliferation of bilateral trade deals among Asian countries is an undesirable fallout of the slow progress in global trade talks and against the interests of the poorest countries in the region, according to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).
