In The News

Thieves Embrace Globalization

Lee Shi-Ian March 17, 2009
A supply chain of car thieves, brokers and crime syndicates track preferences of global customers and provide vehicles accordingly. Thieves act on the lists provided by foreign buyers, and 4x4 trucks are among the most popular, reports Lee Shi-Ian for New Straits Times Online. The crimes follow a pattern of thieves receiving requests from buyers in Cambodia, China or Saudi Arabia; finding the...

Protectionism Threatens Global Economic Recovery

Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett March 13, 2009
A global economic recession increases the temptation for national governments, as happened in the past, to pursue protectionism, despite its proven record of harming the economy. What makes similar attempts now by governments more insidious is that they are more subtle and thus murkier to detect. As Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett, editors of a new study note, measures are being taken “that...

A Textile Capital of China Is Hobbled by a Downturn Gone Global

David Barboza March 10, 2009
The world’s largest economy that once thrived on consumption took a sudden turn to thriftiness. But a global slowdown in spending has hurt factory towns in China that once packed US closets at low prices. Thousands of workers have lost jobs and two out of every three textile and apparel factories in China could go out of business, reports David Barboza for the New York Times. “Experts say that...

The Multilateral Trading System: A Response to Its Challengers

Ernesto Zedillo March 9, 2009
Protectionism could derail all the efforts applied on the fiscal and monetary fronts to address the ongoing global crisis, suggests Ernesto Zedillo, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. In an essay for a new ebook published by VoxEU he writes, “Despite the multitude of statements against protectionism made by leaders and their finance and trade ministers in recent months,...

For East Asia, Crisis Prompts a Rethinking of Dependence on Exports

Keith Bradsher March 5, 2009
For many years, East Asian exporters in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan have enjoyed a massive growth in surplus. But all that has changed. As trade withers away, exporters in East Asia are suffering because consumers, retailers and other importers in the West are cutting back on their purchases, orders and have even gone to the extreme of stopping orders altogether. The question is, how to...

Britain Must Not Go Wobbly on the Free Market

Emma Marcegaglia February 10, 2009
When jobs are hard to come by, communities naturally try to support local businesses. Domestic workers demand job protection, without stopping to calculate how many might work for foreign firms. Any defensive posture comes at a grave cost, as foreign employers retaliate, abruptly halting efficient trade and hiring. Unfortunately, even the nations that have benefited so much from free trade, such...

Obama Risks Flap on “Buy American”

Neil King Jr. February 9, 2009
Anyone who has read recent reports on the global economic crisis should understand that protectionism is dangerous and that protectionist legislation prolonged the Great Depression during the 1930s. Despite modern agreements that regulate open trade, some US workers and politicians can’t help but be tempted to direct public spending to domestic firms and workers. In preparing a multibillion...