Hello, everyone, from Washington, where Margrethe Vestager, head of EU competition and digital policy, and Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the new British trade minister, are there.

Here, Vestag launched a shiny new initiative on the cooperation between the United States and the European Union on technology antitrust policy, and Trivilian hopes to get some support from US officials on those pesky steel tariffs-this is our report today. One of the themes.

Concession waters Check for evidence of backflow (or lack of evidence).
Trade ties A selection of Nikkei’s great readings highlights how supply chain barriers affect even large companies like Apple.

From Brexit to spyware, policies put pressure on allies

This week’s two story developments highlight how the United States is increasingly using its trade policy as an element of broader foreign policy.

the first is Our exclusive news Regarding the United States’ delay in reaching an agreement with the United Kingdom due to Britain’s position on the Northern Ireland issue, the Trump-era tariffs on steel and aluminum have been lifted.

Of course, this is a highly sensitive issue for the UK, and neither Downing Street nor the White House wants to make this story public.For those who are not concerned about this major trade dispute between the UK and the EU, the UK has repeatedly threatened to unilaterally trigger Article 16 The Brexit agreement with the European Union is a guarantee clause in the Northern Ireland agreement after Brexit. This clause takes precedence over parts of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and will suspend inspections of goods shipped from other parts of the UK to Northern Ireland.

Senior U.S. Congressman and Joe Biden Warn british Breaking up the NI agreement will destroy the peace on the island of Ireland. The UK countered that it believes that the two things are not connected and that when it comes to the subtle issues of the agreement, it must do what it thinks is best.

This is a very unusual situation. Straightforward trade policies, as well as a lot of tariffs imposed by the previous government on the imports of allies, are being used to pressure allies to act in a certain way on an arguably unrelated topic.

The second example is the case of the Ministry of Commerce Entity list The Israeli military-grade spyware organization NSO, whose Pegasus software is used to infiltrate the phones of journalists, dissidents, human rights activists, and diplomats. The listing about a month ago means that US technology companies need US government permission to sell to any blacklisted company. The order also covers technology originating from the United States that is not in the United States, so it will cover the sales of U.S. technology by companies outside the United States.

It is clear, but this week someone hinted that the listing is a direct trade retaliation against national security issues. Reuters report American diplomats have become the target of the software.

The list is often used to prohibit the sale of cutting-edge military technology to foreign adversaries, and is increasingly used against various Chinese companies under Trump’s leadership. However, in these cases, it is well known that the United States will provide licenses to allow American companies to continue to export some American technology, because preventing it completely would weaken the US semiconductor industry. In fact, a potential unintended consequence is that the listing of Chinese chip manufacturer SMIC has brought more orders to Taiwan’s foundry TSMC, which has exacerbated the global chip crisis.

The NSO case is simpler in some respects because the company has no value to the United States or the global supply chain, and is more complicated because the relationship between the United States and Israel is much better than the relationship between the United States and China (to put it mildly). Although the United States can grant licenses and carefully target its export controls, listing also includes the purchase of technology used to run basic business operations, from mobile phones and laptops for employees to rented servers and cloud computing services widely used by American companies. A former business official said that the United States can “absolutely” block all these basic goods transactions. Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that, in fact, the listing “shows everyone that the company is radioactive and should not be touched.”

One month after listing, We start to see the effect. NSO’s lenders appear to be preparing to restructure the group’s debt. Lenders said they had tried to sell loans to other investors, but it was difficult to find willing buyers even at discounted prices.

So what’s next? Well, we want to see more punitive export controls imposed on spyware organizations. The United States has long used Treasury Department sanctions to cut off individuals and companies from the U.S. dollar. Now it is increasing its use of trade tools to try to drive companies out of the global supply chain.

As for the talks with Trevelyan, we will pay close attention to any progress, but it seems that they may have gone beyond the usual channels of trade diplomacy.

Concession waters

Since the pandemic began to predict the regionalization of commodity trade, there has been a lot of discussion. It is believed that the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of countries and companies that rely on the transportation of important goods from Asia or other production centers.From global semiconductors to Glass bottles in the U.S..

The idea of ??return trade has gained a firm foothold, and supporters believe that it is better to produce products close to the place of consumption instead of relying on globalization to transport goods. However, the annual DHL Global Connectivity Index raises questions about this. It found that the trade distance continued to increase during 2020.

“If there is a strong shift towards regionalization, we expect trade to take place over a shorter distance on average,” Presentation report, Written by Steve Altman, Director of DHL Globalization Initiatives at New York University Stern, and his colleagues. Andy Bonds

Trade ties

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