by Chip Krakoff on June 29, 2009
in Africa, Asia, Competitiveness, Countries, Development, Eastern Europe, Economic Reform, Growth, Investment, Trade, protectionism
Welcome back!
“The Vital Wave Consulting” blog has an interesting post from June 26 – “Is the Rest of the World Ready for a Unified BRIC?” - about last week’s summit in Moscow of the four “BRIC” countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The article ponts out that trade among the four countries is too small to justify talk of a new trading bloc, but remarks that they have some common interests with respect to world trade, notably reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar. The BRIC countries are hard to overlook. Together they comprise about 43% of the world’s population and 15% of its GDP, and hold over 40% of the world’s gold and foreign exchange reserves. Their economies are growing at more than double the pace of developed economies. That they are holding a summit at all indicates that they are looking for ways to throw their combined weight around for mutual benefit. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
agriculture,
Belarus,
Brazil,
BRIC,
Cairns Group,
China,
economic growth,
India,
liberalization,
Nigeria,
Russia,
South Africa,
subsidies,
trade bloc
Several months ago I posted an article contending that decoupling – the notion that movements in emerging markets correlate minimally, if at all, with those in mature markets – was dead. The vertiginous rise in most emerging market indices over the previous seven or eight years stood in stark contrast to the anemic performance of the S&P 500 over the same period. As the financial meltdown and subsequent recession hit, there was a brief moment when it seemed that many of the emerging markets, especially in Asia and Latin America, might emerge unscathed. Subsequent events indicated that emerging markets, especially in Africa but also Southeast Asia, were suffering as much as the OECD countries, but with much less of a cushion against humanitarian catastrophe. In some parts of Africa, a five per cent drop in GDP can push millions of people into starvation. Decoupling, as I wrote, was dead. Even the miserable Congolese worker scrabbling in the dirt for diamonds or gold or the columbium-tantalite used in cell phones, was hit by the collapse in consumer and industrial demand in America, Europe, Japan, and China.
I may have been wrong. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
agriculture,
Asia,
Brazil,
Crisis,
decoupling,
economic growth,
emerging markets,
Indonesia,
manufacturing,
Russia,
slump,
Thailand
