As governments consider commitments to reduce carbon emissions, an accompanying question is what adjustments are appropriate to counteract any competitive disadvantage to domestic producers resulting from such commitments, particularly in the European Union, the United States and other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.1 Considering the widely diverging levels of commitments in the area of carbon reductions, many specialists consider that some form of remedy is reasonable in order to maintain the competitiveness of domestic industries.

This report examines how IT was incorporated into cargo clearance procedures in Korea, and what its implications are for traders, SMEs in particular. After a short introduction in Section I, Section II examines the definition of SMEs in Korea, and SMEs’ role in Korean trade. In Section III, we describe the history of the adoption of IT in Korean cargo clearance. The introduction of IT to cargo clearance procedures in Korea can be roughly divided into two stages.

Multilateral rules for international trade were created with the objectives of securing market access for the post-war recovering economies and supporting their continued growth. Following the introduction of these rules in 1947 as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), it became clear that those countries with easier access to other countries’ markets were able to grow faster.

The current economic crisis has lent extra urgency to ASEAN’s efforts at economic integration and raising its attractiveness for trade and investment. This process gained momentum in the 1990s and has made much progress, as reflected in the emergence of a wide range of extra- and intra-regional agreements. However, the effectiveness of this network of arrangements in stimulating trade and investment depends on not just the characteristics of each arrangement but how well they complement each other.

Since the 1990s, the rapid expansion of China’s textiles and clothing enterprises to Cambodia has been closely linked to the phenomenon of industrial clustering of textiles and clothing firms at the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Bohai Rim.

Until the late 1990s China, Japan, and South Korea (hereafter Korea), the three major economies in East Asia, stood out as the only major economies without regional trade arrangements (RTAs) in the world. In very recent years, however, the three countries have signed bilateral/plurilateral trade arrangements with many countries or groups of countries.

The negotiation and implementation of preferential trade agreements has gained momentum in recent years. Given the range of agreements being simultaneously negotiated and implemented, there is potential for significant, and perhaps unanticipated, interactions between them. In this chapter, a dynamic global trade model is used to focus on illustrative examples from Asia and the Pacific, a region that has been particularly active in pursuing preferential trade agreements. First, the focus is on a number of bilateral “hub-and-spoke” agreements, with China as the “hub”.

Trade in services in India has been growing rapidly since beginning of the last decade, following significant domestic liberalization on one hand, and access to a growing overseas market for services, on the other hand. By not only growing more rapidly than the country’s merchandise exports, India’s services export grew much faster than that recorded by the world during the past decade and a half. India’s services trade currently constitutes about 32 per cent of the country’s total trade...

(MARKHUB publication)

The impact of trade liberalization on growth and employment is a much debated and controversial issue. In theory, trade liberalization results in productivity gains through increased competition, efficiency, innovation and acquisition of new technology. Trade policy works by inducing substitution effects in the production and consumption of goods and services through changes in price. These factors, in turn, influence the level and composition of exports and imports.

In line with trends in the other economies, South Asia has been actively engaged in trade liberalization during the past decade, both on a unilateral and a regional basis.