President Trump’s preference for bilateral trade agreements, expressed when he pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in 2017, has borne modest results: one comprehensive agreement and several limited trade deals. He recently
In an October 2020 meeting, the parties to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) invited the United Kingdom to take the final steps to become a party to the Agreement in its own right in 2021. This post reviews Britain’s accession to the GPA and
A recently published article, “Growing Significance of Regional Trade Agreements in Opening Public Procurement” compares the role of the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and regional trade agreements (RTAs) in opening government procurement
On April 28, the European Union and Mexico concluded negotiations of “the last outstanding element” of their new trade agreement that was announced two years ago. The missing element was “the exact scope” of the opening of their public procurement
A paper, Converging Procurement Systems: Developments in 2019, was presented at the annual Thomas Reuters’ Government Contracts Year in Review Conference in February 2020. It examined key developments in the international procurement
On February 4, Bloomberg news service reported that President Trump is considering issuing an executive order that would withdraw the United States from the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). This post considers some of the likely consequences of
When President Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement at the beginning of his presidency, he emphasized his interest in negotiating trade deals on a bilateral basis. Nearly three years later, he can point to
In November, the leaders of 15 of the 16 countries participating in the negotiation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) announced that they had concluded negotiations on the text of the trade agreement and “essentially all their market
On May 30, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) took a step forward in its efforts to obtain Congress’s approval of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), with its submission of a draft Statement of Administrative Action (SAA) to congressional
Not content with waging one trade war that may soon encompass all imports from China, President Trump has now embarked on a second that will place a tariff on all imports from Mexico unless it stops migrants from entering the United States. This post looks at