Free Trade

Trade sanctions are among the many tactics resorted to by the international community in order to compel a state to comply with its human rights obligation. 

According to Edwards, reducing the record-high $1.7 trillion USD global trade finance gap will be amongst the most important considerations facing the trade finance industry in 2023. The trade finance sector is developing several tools to address this issue.

At the WTO’s Public Forum in September 2022, helping MSMEs access trade and trade finance, especially during the current economic times, has been one of the top agenda items.

To learn more about how the WTO is putting its weight behind the cause, Trade Finance Global (TFG) spoke with Uruguay’s Ministry of Foreign Relations, Mauro Bruno.

It is often debated whether the reported existing trade finance gap, which over the last 3 years has oscillated between $100 billion and $120 billion, will diminish or whether the nature of illiquid, growth-focused, emerging market economies means that the gap will never truly close.

Changing this mindset and highlighting the human lives behind international trade policy is what Clara Weinhardt, assistant professor in international relations at Maastricht University, hopes to do with the Faces of Trade Diplomacy project.

Trade Finance Global has partnered with UKEF, the UK government’s export credit agency, and DIT to produce the UK Trade & Export Finance Guide.

As Iain Martin of the Times said, “To deny the downsides of Brexit on trade with the EU is to deny reality.”
The decision to secede from the world’s largest single market area was bound to have some short-term economic consequences, but the UK may be experiencing more than a short-term decline.

Confidence, demand and energy shock waves, writes Ana Boata, Global Head of Economic Research at Allianz Trade. Allianz Trade is the new name for trade credit insurer Euler Hermes, which became part of the Allianz SE group in 2018.

Letters of credit are one of the most commonly used trade finance instruments, and they are a great way to increase security and mitigate risk during a trade transaction

This article was co-authored by:

– Arun Prakash, strategy officer for trade and commodity finance at IFC
– Dennis Ochieng, economist at IFC
– Shanshan Li, consultant at IFC

Freeports are a special kind of air, rail, or seaport, where normal tax and customs rules don’t apply, says John Lucy, director of Liverpool City Region Freeport

Twenty years ago Asia had a 12% share of the global factoring market. Today that share is 25%.

In this article, FCI’s Lin Hui looks at factoring’s two decades of steady growth in Asia, and where the industry goes from here…

As the clocks struck midnight, we looked back at over 700 articles, handpicking our favourite stories that made the headlines in 2021

Over the weekend, China celebrated the 20th anniversary of its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Brexit has typically been seen as an issue between the UK and the EU with little thought given to the divorce agreement’s impact on other countries.