...MBA 602 International Business Section: 960 IB News Article 11/29/12 Japan Dives into Trade Talks ASEAN leaders begin RCEP negotiations Summary: An effort is being negotiated currently to launch a new regional comprehensive economic partnership called RCEP. The concept is this: to engage 16 Asia Pacific nations for free trade and to establish a trilateral free trade agreement with China and South Korea. Negotiations in this landmark free trade pact are taking place now in Phnom Pehn following the ASEAN Summit. If or once it is formed the RCEP is likely to cover half of the world’s population and would be the largest regional trading arrangement in the world to date. The RCEP is a strategy aimed at maintaining regional growth by ensuring that markets of the participating countries remain open and competitive. It is estimated that Japan’s GDP will grow by 1.1 percent with a wide range of partnership frameworks: tariff reductions and intellectual property protection. Under RCEP, which is different from individual country to country rules, there is a unification of rules and simpler business transaction procedures. The potential free trade agreements between ASEAN and China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand could eventually lead to the creation of an integrated market that spans 16 countries with a combined market population of more than 3 billion people and a combined GDP of about US$19.78 trillion based on 2011 figures. The barriers...
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...(Integration). Regional Integration is “an arrangement for enhancing cooperation through regional rules and institutions entered into by states of the same region. Regional integration could have as its objective political or economic goals or in some cases, a business initiative aimed at broader security and commercial purposes. Regional integration could have an intergovernmental or supranational organization” (Regional Integration). Integration usually occurs between several types of countries which can be labelled into three categories: these are developed countries, developing countries and underdeveloped countries. Interaction between these countries in the different categories leads to integration among these countries. Integration, especially regional integration, is found among, developed and developing countries, between just developing countries and or developed and underdeveloped countries. Trade is a major core aspect which builds integration between countries, also their geographic location. Countries which have a common geographical location develop a regional integration among companies. An example is Caribbean Community (CARICOM). In the article , The Building Blocks of Successful Regional Integration Lessons for CSME from other Integration Schemes, the authors Rachel Simms and Errol Simms quoted integration as “…..the formation by neighboring territorial units, of alliance to boost economic and subsequently, political integration through free trade areas of customs...
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... Issue 3 January 2012 India’s ‘Look East’ and America’s ‘Asia Pivot’: Converging Interests March 2013 What’s in a name? Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific? In a speech to the Indian parliament in 2007, Shinzo Abe, the then-prime minister of Japan, became one of the first Asian leaders to call attention to a dawning geopolitical reality: “We are now at a point at which the Confluence of the Two Seas is coming into being…The Pacific and the Indian Oceans are bringing about a dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity. A ‘broader Asia’ that (breaks down) geographical boundaries is beginning to take on a distinct form.” Abe was a little ahead of his time in acknowledging the “distinct form” of the IndoPacific region. Many believe that day has now arrived. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the term in her seminal 2011 Foreign Policy article “America’s Pacific Century.” More recently, India’s ambassador to the United States and former foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao, made the case for the Indo-Pacific in a speech at Brown University: “There is a seamless stretch of oceanic space that links the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The earlier concept of the Asia-Pacific had sought to exclude India— today the term Indo-Pacific encompasses the subcontinent as an integral part of this eastern world. We are glad that the mental map of the Asia Pacific has changed and that the center of gravity has moved westward to include India…The task before us is to concretely define this concept...
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...MICROECONOMICS II ASSIGNMENT The Look East Policy (LEP) was a recreation and correction of India’s Foreign Trade Policy. The main purpose was to revive both political ties and to build up economic linkages with South East Asia. LEP focuses on re-establishing better political security and economic co-operation. The first phase was based on ASEAN and it focused initially and mainly on trade and investment linkages. The second phase was based on expanding the definition of east, extending from Australia to china and East Asia with ASEAN as its core. The conference was graced by Sri Nitin Gadkare, honorable Minister for Road Transport and Highway, as Chief Guest. The four main objectives of the conference were: To study the policy as direction for India’s growth. To study the brunt of the policy with the changing geo political scenario worldwide. To examine the potential of the policy as a vector for economic growth and development of these regions. To bring the countries of south East Asia and Asia closer. There were 5 tracks explaining the route map for LEP. We will concentrate mainly on track 1 which was based on India’s trade and investment in South East and East Asia. The change in focus of Indian foreign policy from concentrating on the west towards east finds its source in the LEP. It also aims at redesigning the present economic architecture which will be marketed by regional trading blocs. India’s engagement with ASEAN and East Asian countries establishes its acceptance of...
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...criteria of regional power status in Asia Pacific. Today China is one of the largest economies in the world in GDP, and has the largest reserves of foreign exchange. In terms of manpower, China has the biggest military in the world. Chinese defense expenditure is the highest in the region and the second highest in the world. China possesses nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and missile submarines. A regional power must: 1. belong to a geographically defined region; 2. articulate the pretension of a leading position in this region; 3. have great influence in regional affairs and dominate this region in economic and military terms; 4. play the role of regional peacemaker; 5. be integrated in interregional and global forums and institutions; 6. be recognized or accepted as the regional leader by its neighbors. First of all The Asia-Pacific region includes East Asia, Southeast Asia and Australasia near the Pacific Ocean. China belongs to geographic region of East Asia. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and Mongolia also refer to geographic East Asia. Secondly, China pretends to be a regional power. The Asian economic crisis that occurred in 1997 can prove this fact. China wanted to assume itself as a state leader in solving that crisis. This leadership role became an important step towards China’s recognition as a regional leader. Thirdly, China has affected the states in Asia territory with its religious and alphabet. China plays a larger role in regional affairs...
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...for the past 50 years and was established by economists who investigated the early attempts of European countries to combine separate economies into larger economic regions.18 More specifically, economic integration—also called “regional integration”—refers to the discriminate reduction or elimination of trade barriers among participating nations. This also implies the establishment of some form of cooperation and coordination among participants, which will depend on the degree of economic integration that ranges from free-trade areas to an economic and monetary union. Integration among countries in a geographical region to reduce, and ultimately remove, tariff and non-tariff barriers to the free flow of goods, services, and factors of production among each other. For examples: EU (European Union), NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) Level of economic integration: The levels of economic integration divided into five different levels and they are shown in figure 1.0. The first one is the Free Trade Area, Custom Union, Economic Union, Monetary Union and then the political union. These five levels are inter- linked with each other; first we have to have the come up with the identification of the free trade area among the participant. Than to ensure the exchange of the goods among the participant a custom union will be required. This custom union will provide the facilities to and check in and check out of the goods through the custom...
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...participates in the world economy as one economic unit and operates under one official currency, the euro. The EU's goal is to create a barrier-free trade zone and to enhance economic wealth by creating more efficiency within its marketplace. The current formalized incarnation of the European Union was created in 1993 with 12 initial members. Since then, many additional countries have since joined. The EU has become one of the largest producers in the world, in terms of GDP, and the euro has maintained a competitive value against the U.S. dollar. EU and non-EU members must agree to many legal requirements in order to trade with the EU member states. The European Union is a group of countries whose governments work together. It's a bit like a club. To join you have to agree to follow the rules and in return you get certain benefits. Each country has to pay money to be a member. They mostly do this through taxes. The EU uses the money to change the way people live and do business in Europe. Countries join because they think that they will benefit from the changes the EU makes EU is a unique economic and political partnership between 27 European countries that together cover much of the continent. The EU was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. The first steps were to foster economic cooperation: the idea being that countries who trade with one another become economically interdependent and so more likely to avoid conflict. The result was the European Economic Community (EEC)...
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...ISAS Insights No. 8 – Date: 25 October 2005 Institute of South Asian Studies Hon Sui Sen Memorial Library Building 1 Hon Sui Sen Drive (117588) Tel: 68746179 Fax: 67767505 Email: isaspt@nus.edu.sg Wesbite: www.isas.nus.edu.sg ECONOMIC IMPACT OF TERRORISM ON THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN REGION 1 S. Narayan 2 Introduction The most important sea-lane of communication (SLOC) in the Southeast Asian region is the Straits of Malacca, the main passage between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. It is 600 miles long and 300 miles wide on its western side. The length of the Singapore Straits, which connects Malacca with the South China Sea, is 75 miles, with an overall width of less than 12 miles. The Malacca and Singapore Straits provides the artery through which a significant proportion of global trade is conducted. Some 50,000 ship movements carrying as much as one quarter of the world’s commerce and half the world’s oil pass through these Straits each year. The second SLOC is the wider and deeper Lombok. It is less congested than the Straits of Malacca, is quite often used as an alternative passage and is considered a safer route. The third SLOC is the 50-mile long Straits of Sunda, another alternative to Malacca. Because the currents are strong and the depth of the water is limited, deep draft ships do not use these straits. The largest SLOC is the South China Sea. It stretches 1,800 nautical miles from Sumatra to Taiwan and is home to four principal island groups and...
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...Sociologists see globalization as the celebration of diversity and the convergence of social preferences in matters of lifestyle and social values. To the political scientist, it represents the gradual erosion of State sovereignty. But disciplinespecific studies explain only a part of the phenomenon. From a multidisciplinary angle, globalization may be treated as a phenomenon, a philosophy and a process which affect human beings as profoundly as any previous event.3 Several factors have been responsible for this phenomenon. This study confines its attention to four growthenhancing facets of globalization that have been among its key drivers, namely, trade, finance, communications and transport. Trade M The world has never experienced globalization at this level of intensity before The protectionism which emerged in international trade after the Second World War gave way to gradual liberalization, comprising both unilateral liberalization and rules-based multilateral liberalization spearheaded by GATT. The...
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...Communist neighbours such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. These countries had started to abandon central planning and implement market-oriented economic reforms from the early 80s, changes which had significant implications for trade and investment opportunities and indicated the need for enlargement of the ASEAN regional grouping in order to maintain its relevance (Wong, Mistilis & Dwyer, 2011a). The momentum to expand ASEAN was further accelerated by the need to strengthen the region’s voice in international trading bodies such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, the World Trade Organization, and in negotiations with the European Union (Tan, 2003). Between 1995 and 1997, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) joined ASEAN. They are sometimes referred to as newer members with less-developed economies. With the ASEAN Concord II in late 2003, Southeast Asia charted an ambitious path toward creating a community (AC) founded on economic, security and socio-cultural pillars. In contrast to the EU on which the agreement is loosely based, have rested on open dialogue and concensus processes that have allowed politically and economic diverse nations to cooperate at the regional level. The progress of on ASEAN Concord II will rest on strong regional diplomacy and management of economic and foreign policy convergence. The AEC (Asian Economic Community) hopes to create a single market and production base with free flow of goods, services, investments, capital, and skilled...
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...FTA: South Korea & The EU | | | Table of Contents Executive Summary 2 Introduction 4 International Trade between South Korea & the European Union 6 A Macroeconomic Analysis of South Korea 6 The Free Trade Agreement between South Korea & the EU 6 International Trade between SK & EU 9 Other FTA Examples of South-Korea 10 World Trade Organization (WTO): Position regarding Bilateral Agreements 11 Conclusion & Recommendations 14 References / Endnotes 15 Appendices 17 Executive Summary This report analyzes trade relations between South Korea, one of the four Asian dragons, with the European Union, which has the largest nominal GDP and GDP PPP in the world. South Korea's industrialization, urbanization and GDP are rapidly growing mainly because of its comparative advantage in manufacturing and exporting of technological goods, its political centralization also supports a clear coordination and effectiveness of laws reforms. However, its aging population, low fertility rates, recent decline in FDIs and unresolved political disputes with Democratic People's Republic of Korea should be amended in order to increase consumer confidence and improve its international potential. South Korea's main partners are the United States of America and the European Union. The EU-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (2011) offers, among other things, preferential import duties and liberalization in trade of services via provisions for intellectual...
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...State Sovereignty and Regional * Institutionalism in the Asia Pacific Shaun Narine Working Paper No. 41, March 2005 * A revised version of the paper is scheduled to be published in The Pacific Review later this year. Recent Titles in the Working Paper Series No. 28 The Revolution in Military Affairs and Its Impact on Canada: The Challenge and the Consequences, by Andrew Richter, March 1999. No. 29 Law, Knowledge and National Interests in Trade Disputes: The Case of Softwood Lumber, by George Hoberg and Paul Howe, June 1999. No. 30 Geopolitical Change and Contemporary Security Studies: Contextualizing the Human Security Agenda, by Simon Dalby, April 2000. No. 31 Beyond the Linguistic Analogy: Norm and Action in International Politics, by Kai Alderson, May 2000. No. 32 The Changing Nature of International Institutions: The Case of Territoriality, by Kalevi J. Holsti, November 2000. No. 33 South Asian Nukes and Dilemmas of International Nonproliferation Regimes, by Haider K. Nizamani, December 2000. No. 34 Tipping the Balance: Theatre Missile Defence and the Evolving Security Relations in Northeast Asia, by Marc Lanteigne, January 2001. No. 35 Between War and Peace: Religion, Politics, and Human Rights in Early Cold War Canada, 1945-1950, by George Egerton, February 2001. No. 36 From Avignon to Schleswig and Beyond: Sovereignty and Referendums, by Jean Laponce, June 2001. No. 37 Advancing Disarmament in the Face of Great Power Reluctance: The Canadian Constitution...
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...need to investigate and detain those who threaten Australia, its people or interests. These Security Agencies experienced substantial budget increases to further develop capabilities in the fight against terrorism. Regional stability throughout South East Asia provides a challenge for Australian foreign security policy. Australia’s geographical proximity to Southeast means Australia has an invested interest in maintaining stability through strong ties with states such as Indonesia. This essay will critically state how the US and South East Asia have shaped Australian security with an international response against terrorism. Over the past 60 years Australia and the US have formed an alliance to combat those who pose threat to global security. The alliance was constitutionally formalized in 1951 with the signing of the ANZUS Treaty (US Department of State, 2011). The signing of the treaty binds Australia and the United States to consult on mutual threats and act upon common dangers. The agreement was drawn into effect for the first time with a global response against the terrorist actions of September 11. Australia and the US have shared military and intelligence capabilities with the invasion into Afghanistan and Iraq (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade [A]). The bilateral diplomatic approach provides the transparency need to establish the agreement for joint actions against...
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...ECIPE OCCasIOnal PaPEr • no. 2/2010 REGIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION IN ASIA: THE TRACK RECORD AND PROSPECTS By Razeen Sally Razeen Sally (razeen.sally@ecipe.org) is Director of ECIPE and on the faculty of the London School of Economics www.ecipe.org info@ecipe.org Rue Belliard 4-6, 1040 Brussels, Belgium Phone +32 (0)2 289 1350 ECIPE OCCASIONAL PAPER ExECuTIvE SuMMARy This is the season for regional-integration initiatives in Asia. There is talk of region-wide FTAs, and there are east-Asian initiatives on financial and monetary cooperation. But grand visions for Asian regional blocs are not achievable. Regional economic integration is most developed in east Asia, but only because of manufacturing supply chains linked to global markets. South Asia is the most malintegrated region in the world. And east and south Asia are much less integrated in finance than they are in trade and FDI – due to highly restrictive national policies governing financial markets. Asia’s existing FTAs are “trade light”. They are largely limited to tariff cuts, but have barely tackled non-tariff regulatory barriers in goods, services and investment, and are bedevilled by complex rules of origin requirements. An APEC FTA initiative has gone nowhere – entirely predictable given such a large, heterogeneous grouping. An east-Asian or a pan-Asian FTA, by discriminating against third countries, would compromise regional production networks linked to global supply chains. Moreover, huge economic...
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...the background, formation, global and regional impact of Mercosur and its members as well as the current dilemmas that are being faced. Issues ranging from economic to political will be discussed throughout. Internal disputes and protectionist policies place Mercosur in an uncertain situation as they focus to defend their own domestic products all whilst maintaining a steady external trade. A continuing worldwide economic power house, Mercosur continues to struggle with certain facets of trade and political structure. Background South America throughout past decades has seen bloodshed and political instability, and despite much improvement there is still reoccurring corruption to date. Although the Pablo Escobar reign in Colombia, Noriega’s rule in Panama, and Castro’s hold on Cuba are no longer relevant, there still remains similar political instability today. Mercosur directly translated is Mercado Comun del Sur, or The Southern Common Market, and is a trade bloc for six of South America’s member nations (See Appendix A for current member countries) where they enjoy free trade, very similar to that of the North American Free Trade Agreement, where the goal is full South American economic integration. Enacted in 1991 under the Treaty of Ascuncion, Mercosur was created around the time of NAFTA, and other world trade blocs where they sought to fill the grey areas of GATT , General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, that over looked regional, political, and cultural needs for its...
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