From Lisbon to Tokyo, groups of European and Asian nations are hammering out massive trade deals and constructing billions of dollars worth of infrastructure to connect themselves better.
With the ideological divide between the West and East fading away, trade links between Asia and Europe are expanding at a colossal speed.
On July 25, the Unison Jasper pulled into the Australian port of Newcastle carrying 31,000 tons of alumina bound for one of the country’s largest smelters. The ship had traveled around the world in the seven months since the pandemic began, but in Australia, authorities found a problem serious enough to detain the vessel.
During the two decades before the 2008 global financial crisis, the world economy seemed to be on an irreversible course of ever-deepening globalization. Global trade expanded nearly eightfold in the 1990s and 2000s and doubled as a share of global gross domestic product (GDP). However, governments and companies around the world are now facing new uncertainties concerning the future growth of trade.
Germany’s Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, said yesterday (28 August) that negotiations on the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – or TTIP – between the EU and the US were effectively dead in the water.
“The talks with the US have de facto failed because we Europeans of course must not succumb to American demands,” he told public broadcaster ZDF. “Nothing is moving forward.”
