Trends Transforming Trade

Our recent session as part of the Aid for Trade Global Review emphasized the importance of women entrepreneurs in international trade. The title of the session "Women who rock the international trade" had its origins in a social media campaign that coincided with the international day of women to celebrate the contribution of women to the world of international trade. The campaign particularly focussed on the unsung heroes, the women who daily make a contribution, but out of the spotlight. The focus of the discussion was how women can capitalise on their huge potential to contribute to the world economy. Discussion centred around gender equality in trade, sustainable initiatives to encourage women to trade globally, and the constraints faced by women. The participants also discussed the need to integrate gender aspect into trade policy. The session was organised by GTPA and EIF.

Australia and Peru signed the Peru-Australia Free Trade Agreement (PAFTA) in February 2018. A fellow signatory to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) Agreement, Peru has been one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America over the last decade. PAFTA will build on the benefits of the CPTPP, enabling Australian exporters to diversify beyond traditional export markets and strengthening our economic relationship with Latin America.

The GTPA is delighted to join Dayna Simpson from Monash University, Anne Quarshie from LUT University of Technology (Finland) and Zhaohui Wu from Oregon State University as part of the 79th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management to host a session on Emerging sustainability standards - How SCM scholars can get involved. This cafe session will be an informal discussion in relation to new ISO standards relevant to transparency and chain-of-custody, and how sustainable SCM can be incorporated in these standards.

As we prepare for World Trade Symposium 2019, taking place this year in New York City in November, it’s imperative to consider the existential threat to freer, open and rules-based trade that stems from short-sighted political exploitation. More importantly, what we can do to change the nature of the dialogue and to better tell the story of international trade.

There is no doubt that the recent rise of protectionism and economic nationalism is damaging global trade, and by extension, economic growth, development and inclusion. The current situation is being driven by a number of factors, including the fact that the benefits of international trade have not been distributed widely enough.

Widely regarded as one of the premier gatherings for the global commodity financing sector, GTR Commodities 2019 will provide an unrivalled forum for networking and discussion on the key issues impacting on the global commodities market, from financing trends to geopolitical factors, sector profiles, risk management strategies, sustainability issues and the role of technology.

Attendees will benefit from critical market insight and idea sharing through a series of informative discussions, debates, case studies and breakouts, whilst the unchallenged networking opportunities available at every GTR event will provide access to over 100 companies engaged in commodity finance business, including trading companies, multinationals, financial institutions and service providers.

GTPA will be represented by Niels Strazdins, Head of Global Trade Policy and Europe Director, participating in a debate session: Is global turbulence here to stay?

Talofa everyone!

Thank you for the Australian Government for the opportunity to share our story.

I’m Lisa Vaai, Creative Director of Eveni Carruthers in Samoa, a business started by my great grandfather in 1929. We are Samoan owned, with a fourth generation management team and just over 50 employees. This year we are celebrating 90 years of doing business in Samoa. We have evolved from copra and cocoa export trading to general merchandise to now an apparel business centered around brands reflecting cultural and traditional motifs from the Pacific.

Opinion of: Lisa McAuley, CEO of the Global Trade Professionals Alliance (GTPA)

Standards are the key to consistency in business. They set out the processes, procedures and frameworks to ensure that products, services, processes and people meet a qualified set of expectations. Standards streamline and systematise complexity to provide a level of trust in the best means to achieving an outcome, a capability, a competency or an output.

Standards do far more than just help you comply with the relevant rules and regulations. They play a crucial role in facilitating international trade, supporting businesses into export markets by lowering barriers to trade.

GTPA announce the development of a new tool to empower MSMEs to engage in online ecommerce.

“Today’s MSME is tomorrow’s Microsoft or Alibaba! Every MSME, irrespective of their location or their industry sector needs to be recognised, valued and fostered so that their true potential to achieve greatness can be realised.”- Collins Rex, Asia/Africa Director- GTPA

Exporting online presents exciting opportunities for businesses thinking of expanding into new markets. Online sales are the world’s fasting growing retail channel, globally valued at USD 16.2 trillion.

Trade has an essential role to play in creating a more resilient system – one that can resist or adapt to environmental and economic shocks. It can do so by facilitating the exchange of goods, services and technology—including environmentally sound technologies—required for adaptation, mitigation and disaster preparedness and response. In this way trade contributes to the achievement of the Paris Agreement, SDGs and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Developing countries face the challenge of “double exposure” to both economic shocks and environmental challenges such as climate change and natural hazards, which are becoming more frequent and severe. Investments in low emission, climate resilient agriculture, renewable energy generation, and climate smart infrastructure, for example, could help reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events and build economic resilience.

The Global Trade Professionals Alliance is developing an Inclusive Trade White Paper that will produce practical recommendations on how capacity building and standard setting can facilitate a more inclusive international trading ecosystem.

As part of the 2019 WTO Aid for Trade Global Review in Geneva from the 3-5 July the GTPA and the EIF are delighted to host a session on building gender based policy to drive and facilitate global trade in LDCs.

SMEs are the backbone of most economies and women business owners are also crucial to economic growth. According to research by consultancy, McKinsey, advancing women’s equality could add $28 trillion to global GDP by 2025 – equivalent to adding a new United States and China.

We are in a trade war and it is here to stay

Opinion by: Niels Strazdins, Head of Global Trade Policy - Global Trade Professionals Alliance

The United States is the top destination market for Chinese merchandise exports. Soon virtually all Chinese goods imported into the US will be subject to tariffs, with profound knock-on effects for both businesses and consumers.

Escalating trade friction between the US and China is impacting farmers, consumers and businesses large and small. Billions of dollars of Chinese goods now face 25 per cent tariffs when entering the United States.

Opinion by: Niels Strazdins, Head of Global Trade Policy - Global Trade Professionals Alliance

Australia delivered a fresh mandate to incumbent Prime Minster Scott Morrison in the country’s recent federal election. Turned off by the opposition’s high-tax high-spend agenda, voters elected for the Prime Minister’s more practical approach to economic management.

Moderate economic reform should be enough to keep Australia’s economy humming along, though from a trade point of view it is an economy that is still heavily reliant on the export of a few commodities to a few markets.

Sabrina Varma has over twenty years of experience working in international trade and development, with a view to maximising trade as a tool to support inclusive and sustainable development.

Based on her work experience at national, regional, global levels, across government, private sector and NGOs, and from developed country and developing country perspectives, her approach is based on bringing together shared priorities, requirements and solutions to support trade capacity building in developing countries.

GTDW China is the 18th International Edition of The Global Trade Development Week programmes. Join over 500 International, Regional & Domestic trade leaders, 80 Speakers and leading exhibitors across our summit programmes, workshops, exhibition, G2G, G2B & B2B networking and site visits to leading trade locations in Shanghai. The theme of GTDW for 2019 in China is around The Future of Global Trade combining an exhibition of leading trade technologies enabling efficient and secure trade facilitation between countries and regions. GTDW China is partnered with Shanghai Asia-Pacific Model E-Port Network Operational Center (SAOC) which was set up in Shanghai in 2016, with the view of promoting trade facilitation and supply chain connectivity. SAOC and GTDW have shared focus on the enhancement of capacity building and public-private partnership to improve the connectivity of the international supply chain and the facilitation of cross-border trade.

The GTPA is pleased to welcome Daniel Spencer as the latest Global Trade Professional, certified under ISO/IEC 17024 as a Trade Management specialist. As a certified Global Trade Professional, Daniel is one of the very first to be part of a global ecosystem of trade professionals.

Coriolis Technologies, the world’s leading source of data and analytics as a service for trade professionals, has today announced a partnership with the Global Trade Professionals Alliance (GTPA), to develop the world’s first digital trade database.

The database will provide more timely and relevant information on global trade flows, allowing users to better understand how global trade is changing as digital technologies and services become more important aspects of supply chains.

The database will be used by banks, governments and the investment community, allowing them to make robust and more informed business decisions with unparalleled insight into the global flows of goods, services and strategic trade.

The GTPA would like to congratulate ITAC member Sir Al-Nashir Jamal who has recently been appointed to the join the Canadian Enterprise as Member of Advisory Board.

Jamal joins Chair David de Launay and founding member Lloyd Girman on the Enterprise Advisory Board, with a focus on infrastructure, resource development and other community-led and owned projects.

The GTPA would like to congratulate Trade Finance and Supply Chain finance working committee members Alisa DiCaprio, Head, Trade and Supply Chain, R3, New York, NY and Craig Weeks, Independent Consultant, Weaverville, NC. Alisa and Craig were recently appointed to the Trade Finance Advisory Council (TFAC) in the United States.

The GTPA would like to welcome two new members to the ITAC committee, Mona Shrestha Adhikari and Jim Redden.

The GTPA is delighted to welcome a new member to our team. Niels Strazdins is Head of Global Trade Policy and Europe Director at the GTPA, leading our policy and research as well as European stakeholder engagement. He sits on several international committees, including the GTPA’s International and Technical Advisory Committee as well as committees convened by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business and the International Organization for Standardization.

Earlier this year GTPA spent two weeks in Southern Africa, visiting South Africa and Botswana, and participating in eCommerce Africa.

Our Africa/Asia Director, Collins Rex, met with the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand on the SSC, as well as the potential to collaborate on training programmes, particularly for African women entrepreneurs and MSME eCommerce entrepreneurs.

Last year the GTPA commenced an Australian aid initiative implemented on behalf of the Australian Government to establish support services for small businesses in developing countries. This initiative aligns perfectly with our commitment to trade-based international development and economic inclusion.

Over the course of this three-year project, the GTPA will help improve the services provided by industry bodies and Chambers of Commerce to small businesses in developing countries, to assist them with their international trade activities. We will also be looking to enhance the ecosystems in which small businesses operate and strengthening their capacity to advocate domestically for trade reform.

Earlier this month, the GTPA, represented by Lisa McAuley (CEO), Collins Rex (Asia and Africa Director) and Niels Strazdins (Europe Director), participated in the UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) eCommerce Week, the leading forum for Ministers, senior government officials, CEOs and other business representatives, international organizations, development banks, academics and civil society to discuss the development opportunities and challenges associated with the evolving digital economy. This year’s theme was “From Digitalization to Development”.

Having participated in previous eCommerce weeks and having presented a session at eCommerce Week Africa in November 2018, the GTPA was delighted to have the opportunity to once again present a session at eCommerce Week 2019. This session, entitled, “Making the most of the value producing opportunities inherent in becoming a digital business”, was presented in partnership with Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF).

Ms. Emmanuelle Ganne is Senior Analyst at the World Trade Organization (WTO) where she leads WTO work on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and blockchain. She is the author of a recently published book entitled "Can Blockchain Revolutionize International Trade?" and is a regular speaker at blockchain events. From 2015 to 2017, she held the position of Vice-President for Europe at the Allam Advisory Group (AAG), a team of former C-level executives and senior diplomats that specializes in helping businesses expand their operations globally. Before joining AAG, Ms. Ganne held various positions at the WTO, as Counselor to Director-General Pascal Lamy, in the Information and External Relations Division, and in the Accessions Division. Before joining the WTO in 2002, Ms. Ganne worked for the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, putting in place the Stability Pact Anti-Corruption Initiative, which assisted South Eastern European states curb corruption. Ms. Ganne is a 2009 Yale World Fellow.

The GTPA and EIF are pleased to invite you to join us for an upcoming session as part of eCommerce Week in Geneva.

Digital transformation is about how a business embraces digital tools to streamline and improve its functionality, and how that business then more efficiently, potently and profitably interacts with its customers.

15 April– 2 June 2019

In an effort to enhance knowledge about the links between trade and gender, the UNCTAD Trade, Gender and Development Programme has developed an Online Course on Trade and Gender.

The course targets academics (from universities and research centres), policymakers and representatives of civil society in developing and transition countries involved in research, teaching, policy formulation and implementation, advocacy or field work in the area of trade and gender.

Shared Services Centres (SSC) is the entity responsible for the execution and the handling of specific operational tasks in an organization, such as accounting, HR, payroll, IT, legal, compliance, purchasing, security, and more. The SSC is often a spin-off of the corporate services to separate all operational types of tasks from the corporate headquarters. As SSCs are often cost centres, they are quite cost-sensitive also in terms of their headcount, labour costs and location criteria.

With a network of 24 bilateral and regional FTAs/Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with 36 trading partners, companies that operate in Singapore are strategically positioned to benefit from easier entry and greater access to global markets for their products and services. More importantly, companies can ride on these FTAs/EPAs to trade with and invest in other countries predictably. This is essential in today’s unpredictable environment of increasing trade tensions.

Event Details
Date : 2-3 April 2019 Time: 08.30am — 05.30pm
Venue : SBF Center Seminar Rooms (Level 6)
Dress Code: Smart Casual
Fee per pax Member: $120 (inclusive of 7% GST) / Non-Member: $250 (inclusive of GST)

Over the past few weeks I’ve undertaken a whistle-stop tour of Asia-Pacific, working on the GTPA’s three-year Australian Aid-funded programme to establish support services for small businesses in developing countries. I have visited Samoa, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh (the countries where the programme will be implemented).

While undertaking a range of meetings with both the public and private sectors, I was also fortunate to catch up with some of the women who were part of the Australia Awards: Women Trading Globally programme. Our CEO, Lisa McAuley, and I initiated this programme back in 2017, and I had the rare privilege of training and guiding the women through three separate courses in 2017 and 2018.