The world is reorienting away from its fixation with exclusive reliance on sea lanes of communication, as the fulcrum of international trade and politics, and its embrace of modern connectivity imperatives. The emerging Eurasian land bridges are now the biggest disrupter of the existing maritime order and impacting the global power shift. The maritime-continental disequilibrium is once again determining the contours of conflicts and contestations in global politics. The new transcontinental linkages and continental value chains are challenging the monopoly of international trade management by Western maritime powers.
The Pacific Rim region is a dynamic geoeconomic space of great power competition where many trade agreements and economic blocs have evolved over the last few decades. This article evaluates the insertion of the four economies of the United States, China, India, and the European Union to understand the evolving architecture of trade relations in this region.
India’s participation in global value chains is investigated, focusing on its exports. Changes in stages of value chain participation for key export sectors are unravelled and its implications for India’s trade policy are commented on.
The recent decision of the United States to impose punitive tariffs on imports from China and the European Union, and the retaliation of these trade partners in tandem, is of concern to the global community. In analysing these contemporary events, it is argued that the genesis of the trade war can potentially be traced to the piling up of global imbalances, and the failure of the global financial institutions or fora—like the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund—to address such imbalances. In such a context, whether the emerging economies have the ability to influence the course and outcomes of the current trade war, and whether this trade war can generate the possibility of reform of the international institutions are explored here.
While Narendra Modi and the BJP government have been eager to project Indian power across the globe, trade potential with Latin America remains unfulfilled.
Estimate of illicit financial outflows and the demand to repatriate these are fraught with issues. First, there can be reversals in direction of flows of illicit money thereby making it tough to ascertain undeclared wealth held abroad. Second, even if the money is traced by the authorities of country, institutional impediments may prevent repatriation. Third, once such money is repatriated it may be more useful to employ these to set up trade transparency units.
Three decades have passed since the inception of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. It still is virtually a non-starter and has not addressed any substantive issue. Intra-regional trade is minuscule. India and Pakistan show little interest in the organisation. Without judging their respective foreign policies, it is argued that South Asian regionalism is not on their agenda. Three questions arise: Is South Asia at all a region? How much does the strategic divide between India and Pakistan, with China factored in, come in the way of South Asian regionalism? Why should India bother about regionalism when its policy of bilateralism serves it fine? To probe these, the region's history, global perceptions of the region, India's foreign and educational practices, and interstate relationships are discussed.
Looking Back at Macroeconomics 101: A Ringside View of the Global Financial Crisis from Asia in Real Time by Alok Sheel; Academic Foundation, 2015; pp 422, ₹1,295.
