Talking to locals in Burmese coffee shops reveals optimism about Myanmar’s future and its fledgling relationship with the West.
Talking to locals in Burmese coffee shops reveals optimism about Myanmar’s future and its fledgling relationship with the West.
In February, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill to rename the street in front of the Chinese embassy “Liu Xiaobo Plaza” in honor of the imprisoned Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, put together at the end of last year and signed at the beginning of last month, has not come into effect yet. Nonetheless, presidential candidates have spared no effort decrying it, turning the issue into a political piñata used to score points.
By choosing the European route instead of the bilateral one to negotiate its trading relationship with Beijing the UK maximizes its leverage with both its European partners and China, which is useful for a medium-sized ex-colonial power.
At a time when the administration wants to convince Vladimir Putin that the U.S. has the will to employ potent economic tools to further its diplomatic objectives, a 34-page document that the Treasury Department delivered to Congress on April 15 doesn’t help our credibility. The “Semiannual Report to Congress on International Economic and Exchange Rate […]
The Russian annexation of Crimea and the continued menacing of Ukraine has given rise to a rather surprising challenge. People are calling for the United States to step up the export of domestically produced oil and, especially, natural gas in order to save Ukraine. The call is not without a logical foundation. Ukraine—a highly inefficient […]
The EU has proposed that it join with the United States to formally coordinate their financial regulatory activities, as part of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Principles (TTIP). U.S. officials reportedly oppose the proposal because such an agreement might dilute Dodd-Frank and other new American regulations. It is more important that they it for reasons of deep principle, and economics. First world executives and […]
One of the year’s most urgent policy questions—whether or not the U.S. should export oil–is finally garnering attention in Washington as both sides of the U.S. oil export debate make their case. The United States began safeguarding domestically produced oil after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, which caused supply disruptions and price spikes in the […]
In mid-January, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced that its foreign exchange reserves had grown by a breathtaking $157 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013. That influx of reserves brought annual growth for 2013 to $508 billion (the largest calendar-year increase ever) and pushed the total amount of China’s reserves toward the $4 […]
Trade ministers for World Trade Organization (WTO) member nations reached agreement in Bali December 7, setting standards for customs, and addressing food and agricultural issues, among other matters. The measures in themselves are limited, but the Bali deal revives the WTO as a channel to approach trade policy. U.S. policy should reassess other approaches […]
The phrase “money laundering” conjures images of suitcases crammed with $100 bills being snuck across the border by a drug cartel courier, and funds being wired into and out of bank accounts in a dizzying series of globe-circling transactions. Those are apt examples of two of the three main methods of scrubbing clean illicit funds […]
The European Union should provide Ukraine with the trade benefits it would have realized had Russian pressure not prompted the government of President Viktor Yanukovych to announce on November 21 that it would not sign a long-anticipated Association Agreement with the EU. That announcement set off not only pro-EU protests in the streets of […]
Canada and the European Union are working out the final details of their newly minted Free Trade Agreement. The first of these modern agreements will be completed with Canada in the midst of new agreements being discussed with Brazil as well as added access for Colombians and with Mercosur as a whole. The Canadian agreement […]
“It’s so far, but so very near to us now.” This is what Dr. Uttam Kumar Sinha observed during the opening of the AsiArctic conference at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA) in New Delhi, India last week. India received observer status in the Arctic Council in May of this year, along with […]
Trying to say something upbeat about U.S.- Russian relations this week entails the same risks as going to a wake intent on offering words that will cheer up the deceased’s widow. The observation that, “At least you won’t have to put up with his snoring anymore” may be accurate enough, but in the grand scheme […]