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AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES IN THE WTO GREEN BOX: ENSURING COHERENCE WITH SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS. The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, October 2009. Current WTO requirements set no ceiling on the amount of green box subsidies that governments can provide, on the basis that these payments cause only minimal trade distortion. Governments are thus increasingly shifting their subsidy spending into this category, as they come under pressure to reduce subsidies that are more directly linked to production. However, evidence suggests that green box payments can affect production and trade, harm farmers in developing countries and cause environmental damage. This information note summarises some of the findings of the forthcoming ICTSD book “Agricultural Subsidies in the WTO Green Box: Ensuring Coherence with Sustainable Development Goals”, eds. Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, Christophe Bellmann and Jonathan Hepburn. To download the paper, please visit http://ictsd.net/i/publications/56284/.
CLIMATE AND TRADE POLICIES IN A POST-2012 WORLD. By the United Nations Environment Programme, 2009. This publication, a joint effort by UNEP and the ADAM project (”Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies: Supporting European Climate Policy”), provides a collection of short, forward-thinking articles by leading experts on the relationship between trade and climate change policies. The authors closely examine a number of timely trade and climate change issues, including the potential use of climate-related border adjustment measures and liberalising trade in climate-friendly technologies. The full publication may be accessed here.
DO TRADING PARTNERS STILL MATTER FOR NIGERIA’S GROWTH? A CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEBATE ON DECOUPLING AND SPILLOVERS. By Kingsley Obiora. IMF Working Paper, 1 October 2009. Should policymakers still be concerned about their trading partners’ economic growth? Have developing and emerging market countries decoupled from the US enough to grow despite significant recession in the US? This working paper addresses these questions for Nigeria in the context of the global crisis. The results seem to debunk the “decoupling theory” and suggest there are still significant spillovers from Nigeria’s main trading partners, including the US, with trade and commodity price linkages being the dominant transmission channels. Given the sharp fall in both trade financing and commodity prices in aftermath of the crisis, these results provide some explanation to the realisation of adverse second-round effects in Nigeria. For more information, please visit http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=23328.0
BENEFITS OF EXPORT TAXES. By the Third World Network. September 2009. To ensure it can access a cheap supply of raw materials from developing countries, the European Union has been trying to discipline developing country use of export taxes and restrictions at the World Trade Organization and in its free trade agreements (FTAs), including economic partnership agreement (EPAs). Developing countries use export taxes today as a source of government revenue to encourage value added and infant industries, to attract foreign investment, to stabilise prices, to improve terms of trade, to deal with currency devaluations and inflation, and to address tariff escalation in importing countries. The paper provides a preliminary description of these uses of export taxes and gives examples and brief case studies, such as Indonesia’s successful transformation into the largest plywood exporter in the world in a few years due to a combination of export taxes, export restrictions and government procurement of domestic plywood. To access this preliminary paper, please visit http://www.twnside.org.sg/pos.htm
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