Trade

• [New] After Brexit the United Kingdom will halve its import tariffs for Thai chicken outside the normal quota, while the recovering economy in China will also push up demand for Thai chicken.
• [New] The Biden administration will rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement linking the economic powerhouses of the Asia-Pacific region - the US, China, Japan, South Korea - to further reduce trade barriers.
• [New] Like with Trump's tariffs, Biden's Buy American plan will cause economic disruptions and impose unnecessary new costs on the margins of global supply chains, but will likely accomplish little more than giving politicians a reason to feel good about themselves.
• [New] The United States' trade deficit with China at the end of the Trump administration will be roughly where it was at the end of the Obama administration, at over $300 billion.
• [New] The trade credit insurer's global insolvency index is expected to hit a record high for bankruptcies, up 35% by the end of 2021, with top increases expected in the US, Brazil, China and core European countries such as the UK, Italy, Belgium and France.
• [New] Promoting regional economic and trade ties on the RCEP platform will open new frontiers for economic growth in China and provide new impetus to regional and even global economic recovery and growth.
• [New] With the world becoming more digital, and with businesses utilising the immense opportunities the internet has for profit, the increase for cybercrime will grow steadily on with the increase of businesses trading online.
• [New] In Brussels, European Union officials took a significant step towards completing a deal with China later in 2021 - after negotiations that began in 2013 - which will open up some Chinese manufacturing markets to foreign investment.
• [New] The risk is that EU expertise - already a niche interest in Whitehall - will diminish further as the UK Government seeks to put the 47 years of UK membership behind it.
• [New] The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade deal concluded in November last year between most of Asia's largest economies, with China as a founding member, will help to expedite the upgrading of Chinese industries and consumption.
• [New] The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and China trade agreements taking full effect in 2021 will bolster trade.
• [New] If Thailand could not contain the second wave the Thai economy in 2022 may grow less than 4%, while the rising number of new cases in Thailand's trading partner countries would adversely affect Thai exports up to the first quarter of 2022.
• [New] Gwadar Port will make Pakistan a regional hub of transit trade and provide immense employment opportunities to the people of Balochistan.
• [New] Reaching a trade deal (which Trump could not), human rights issues in Kashmir, extending visa regimes, and emphasizing climate change cooperation would be some of the other areas of thrust for Biden's India policy.
• [New] Continued trade tensions between China - which controls ~90% of the world's rare earths - and the rest of the world could see the restriction of rare earth exports as a potential political pawn.
• [New] We cannot rule out the possibility that the US-China commercial relationship will deteriorate further in 2021, as more sensitive, complicated, and structural issues began to get involved, such as national security, forced labour, and human rights.
• [New] The US-China trade war in some form will still be with us, as will the new Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) free trade agreement between Southeast Asia and China.
• [New] The coming six months will see negotiations with New Delhi on creating a free trade zone between India and the trading bloc.
• With a new trading relationship now agreed between the UK and the EU, and the COVID-19 vaccination programme underway, we hope to see some level of optimism and positivity return in 2021.
• Belgian foreign trade, which contributed significantly to economic growth in 2018, risks being affected in 2021 by the weakening of economic growth in the eurozone, by the tensions in international trade (including between the US and the eurozone) and Brexit.

Last updated: 24 January 2021