Rethinking Trade Policy for Development: Lessons From Mexico Under NAFTA
Mexico’s disappointing experience with NAFTA underscores the need to reform trade agreements between the United States and developing countries. Eduardo Zepeda, Timothy Wise, and Kevin Gallagher explain that future trade agreements must be made in a manner that respects the right of all participating nations to development, job creation, and the environment.
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The Impact of the Doha Round on Kenya
Kenya’s economy has yet to recover from the global financial crisis and the upheaval that followed the disputed elections of 2007. The ongoing Doha Round of trade negotiations could improve Kenya’s competitive position in processed food and agriculture, but long-term development requires the strengthening of other economic sectors.
Export-Led Growth as a Tool for Financing Development
The global economic crisis is making painfully evident to the developing world the limitations of overdependence on a narrow set of exports and markets. Many countries are rightly worried about the merits of a growth process built on export-led growth. In the case of successful export-led growth strategies, the global economic crisis is revealing an additional limitation: the large exposure of exporting countries to financial vulnerability.
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The Right to Food and the WTO
Developing countries should be allowed to employ trade measures to ensure food security, declared Oliver de Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food.
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Recovery: The Economic Crisis and Middle-Income Countries
There is no single solution to the effects of the financial crisis on middle-income countries, but, introducing fundamental labor markets reforms to create high-paying jobs will be the key to restarting economic growth, according to a new report by Carnegie’s Alejandro Foxley, the former foreign and finance minister of Chile.
Disentangling the Forces Behind Pro-Poor Change in Labor Markets
Past financial data for developing countries show that economic downturns may impact the income of the poor less severely than that of the non-poor. But even small reductions in earnings impose a heavy toll on the poor. -
China: World's Largest Economy
China’s economy will surpass the U.S. by 2035 and be twice its size by midcentury. Albert Keidel argues in his new report, China’s Economic Rise—Fact and Fiction, that China’s rapid growth today is driven by domestic demand—not exports—and will sustain high single-digit growth rates well into this century. China’s ascendency as the preeminent world commercial influence requires U.S. leaders to reassess a broad array of economic and military policies.
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Gulf Economies Must Diversify to Weather Crisis
Oil-producing Gulf states squandered the opportunity to make much needed economic reforms when high oil revenues would have made the task easier. Ibrahim Saif explains that today's reduced oil revenues and global economic uncertainty make it imperative that they develop competitive, diversified economies.
An Employment-Centered Development Strategy for Poverty Reduction in The Gambia
The growth pattern of The Gambia does not appear to be pro-poor; improvements in the rate of growth have, at best, halted the spread of poverty. -
Conditional Cash Transfers in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico: Impacts Upon Inequality
Conditional Cash Tranfers have reduced inequality in three Latin American countries: Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. While they represent only a small share of total income, they have lead to a 21 percent drop in inequality in Brazil and Mexico, and to 15 percent reduction in Chile.
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The Future of North American Trade Policy: Lessons From NAFTA
There is widespread agreement that NAFTA has fallen short of its stated goals. Mexico’s experience under NAFTA shows that the U.S. trade agreements must include robust funding for development and avoid restrictions on government policies proven to promote dynamic development.
Resources
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Brazil’s Trade Challenges
After eight years of strong growth, Brazil has emerged as a key player in global trade negotiations. A Doha trade agreement or a major trade pact with other developing countries, including China, would provide a small boost to Brazil’s economy, according to a new report from the Carnegie Endowment, the International Labour Office, and the UN Development Program.
The report was launched in several cities in Brazil and in Washington, DC. -
India's Trade Policy Choices
India would be six times better off under a multilateral trade agreement in the WTO’s Doha Round than from individual free trade agreements with the EU, US, or China. However, by lifting agricultural tariffs under a Doha agreement, India could lose more than it gained if prices of key commodities continue to swing sharply as they have in the past.
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Winners and Losers: Impact of the Doha Round on Developing Countries
This report presents a path-breaking model of global trade. Its findings are striking: any of the plausible WTO trade scenarios will produce only modest gains for the world; agricultural trade is not a panacea for most poor countries; and additional special measures will be needed to ensure that the least developed countries succeed.
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U.S. Living Standards in an Era of Globalization
Globalization has revealed and exacerbated—rather than created—the unequal distribution of U.S. economic gains over the last decades. Reform of domestic labor laws, the tax system and international economic policy is needed to reverse stagnating incomes and the erosion of job security, health care and pension plans.
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China's Economic Prospects 2006 - 2020
While WTO accession has generally benefited China’s economy, it has further increased the already pronounced economic disparity between Chinese urban and rural households.
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Combining Global and Local Forces: The Case of Labor Rights in Cambodia
Carnegie's Sandra Polaski analyzes the success and broader implications of an innovative policy experiment in Cambodia that links economic growth and increased trade with improvement of workers’ rights in the country’s garment factories.
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NAFTA's Promise and Reality
Ten years after its enactment, NAFTA has been neither the disaster its opponents predicted nor the savior hailed by its supporters. But while NAFTA’s overall impact may be muddled, for Mexico’s rural households the picture is clear – and bleak.
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Protecting Labor Rights Through Trade Agreements: An Analytical Guide
Trade agreements that align incentives facing private firms with those facing governments are best able to improve working conditions and gain rights for workers.
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Trade and Labor Standards: A Strategy for Developing Countries
Recent developments present a new strategic opportunity for developing countries to link trade with domestic policies that promote poverty alleviation, more equitable income distribution, and better working conditions.
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About Carnegie's Trade, Equity and Development Project
