Hello and welcome to Trade Secrets. From a trade policy perspective, what was the result of the first round of French presidential elections last night? Clearly, this was a good result for Macron, but many votes went to far-left and far-right candidates with varying degrees of distaste for various definitions of globalization. We may end up with Macron as president again, and France will continue to be defensive but not blindly sabotaging trade. This is what usually happens. Today we take a look at the unusual event that India signed a trade deal and briefly discuss what it means for the UK to give Ukraine more market access.As always, if you have anything to say, I am [email protected].

An inflection point for India?

India signed a trade deal. This is not a drill. To repeat: India has signed a trade deal. This is not a drill.

ok so deal, with Australia, only a tentative agreement. It does not include several major categories of agricultural products (sugar, dairy, wheat) that are highly defended by Indian farmers.As Sam Lowe in the MFN newsletter point out, which goes to great lengths to allow data localization, in this case in financial services. (India’s decision not to offer any benefit to its highly competitive IT industry by restricting the free flow of data is a miracle of relative disadvantage, matched only by Britain’s insistence on restricting its financial services sector after Brexit.)

Still, India has signed a preferential agreement with a developed economy for the first time in more than a decade. (The respective trade ministers are zoom in here. ) there are more.After being instinctively opinionated on almost every WTO issue since the 2000s, it is one of the core “quartets” of four members (the others being the EU, US and South Africa), which seems to have reached some point tentative proposal Regarding the abandonment of the patent rights for the Covid-19 vaccine. There is a way around this (I’ll talk about it again in a future trade secret), but even though India is engaging constructively and presenting the text to bring back to its capital for discussion, it’s surprising many, including me.

Does this mark a inflection point India’s trade policy? New Delhi has also held talks with the EU and the UK. An initial outpouring of enthusiasm at the start of the talks quickly dissipated, although Britain aimed to reach an interim deal similar to Australia’s by the end of the year. Whether those talks heat up again, especially if India wants a sweeping grand deal with the EU, will be a major test of how serious New Delhi is in opening up to more trade.

The logic of why India should sign the deal is very simple. It has a bad foreign policy relationship with China, and it has ambitions to become a manufacturing power, so any opportunity to integrate into global supply chains and into rich world markets should be welcomed. Geopolitically, India and Australia are of course part of another quartet, and the Asia-Pacific security alliance also includes Japan and the United States.

Such incentives are clearly not enough to overcome the traditional political toxicity of any kind of trade deal in India so far, even for a government like Narendra Modi, which has undertaken quite a bit of unilateral domestic trade freedom change.The ideal opportunity to establish India as a counterweight to Beijing is to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which he has been toying with before a final decision in 2019 no commitment.

If I say that this interim agreement, combined with signs of progress in the WTO patent exemption negotiations, marks a substantial shift, I would have high hopes on a rather fragile peg. But it’s an interesting development.

In addition to this newsletter, I write a trade secret column for FT.com every Wednesday?click here Read the latest news and visit ft.com/trade-secrets Also check out all my columns and previous newsletters.

Britain’s tempting offer for Ukraine

Celebrating with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson trip to ukraine Weekends – it’s hard to turn around in Kyiv these days without running into the head of government – british says It will give Ukraine a special trade deal by removing all tariffs. Honestly, this is not much more than the access to the UK market that Ukraine already has. The UK replicated the EU’s 2014 Deep Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with Ukraine, which appeared to be the trigger for President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Crimea and Donbas regions.

There is a more fundamental problem here.While Putin clearly (and rightly) sees DCFTA as an attempt to pull Ukraine into the EU’s orbit, especially because of the governance aspects of the deal, it doesn’t actually did so much to improve its trade performance. The problem is less market access than a competitive economy producing something to sell.

If and when a Ukraine that is economically and politically inclined to the West emerges, it will need a tons of investment A better business environment and less corruption allow it to enjoy the benefits of trade access. It will be harder and more expensive than fiddling with tariffs, but more likely to have an impact.

Chartered Waters

The Ukrainian war continues to reverberate globally, with metals prices expected to rise by two-thirds due to supply chain disruptions and sanctions on Russia.

This looks like it might benefit Japanese Titanium Suppliertraders are betting that Western companies, especially aerospace and defense companies, will take a larger share of the global metals market as they are forced to leave Russian producers.

Shares in Toho Titanium and Osaka Titanium Technology, one of the world’s only high-grade titanium makers, have risen about 61% and 51%, respectively, since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

trade link

Food prices have reached record high Ingredient costs for classic bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches rise as Ukrainian war ravages More than half Two years in the UK.

Research by scholars Richard Baldwin and Rebecca Freeman discuss The best way for governments to decide when to intervene in supply chains.

Even before the Ukrainian war, higher gas prices had significantly reduced EU demand for the fuel, according to Research From the think tank Bruegel.

Putin makes traders obsessed with central bank reserves again, Say Katie Martin of the Financial Times

There will be no trade secrets next week due to bank holidays.