Tiny Wallonia delivers big blow to international trade

OFFICIALS from Brussels and Belgium are trying frantically to prevent a complete breakdown of negotiations for a European Union (EU)-Canada trade treaty that has taken seven years to finalise. The so-called Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) talks appeared to collapse on Oct 21, highlighting again how 2016 has seen international trade under growing political attack across much of the world from the Asia-Pacific to the Americas.

For at the same time that CETA now appears potentially on the verge of defeat, two other controversial, massive trade deals appear on political "life support". The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - which encompasses 12 countries (the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Vietnam) that collectively account for about 40 per cent of world GDP (gross domestic product) - may be unravelling.

Meanwhile, there are growing signs that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US, which would create an economic bloc accounting for around 50 per cent of global GDP and represent the largest regional international trade and investment agreement in history, is also languishing. The latest bout of trade-related turbulence, over CETA, came last week when Wallonia - a relatively small region of Belgium with a population of around 3.5 million people - indicated to Canada that its opposition to key provisions of the proposed international trade deal were "red lines".