There’s an interesting post over on GlobalPost regarding a report released by the European Commission that finds an increase in protectionism and trade restrictions in both Brazil and Argentina. As though there weren’t already enough to fight about during the upcoming G20 Summit. Emerging economies including Argentina and Brazil are constructing barriers to international trade, [...]
By Robert Amsterdam, CFP Founder Given where things stood going into Barack Obama’s first visit to Russia, it was moderately successful from a diplomatic perspective. The new U.S. president brought a few billion in business deals, agreed to some cuts in nuclear arms and made it clear he’d be willing to compromise on the contentious [...]
Robert Amsterdam’s speech on corporate foreign policy in Helsinki, Finland.
The year 1995 was very tragic for Nigeria: after years of starvation and exploitation, the ethnic minority in Ogoniland, an area rich in oil and gas, began mounting a peaceful civil society movement to demand a greater share of the oil wealth to fund infrastructure in their impoverished communities. Led by the political activist Ken [...]
Earlier this week, I gave a short presentation in London on the legal and political remedies available for foreign investors to protect their assets in emerging markets undergoing resource nationalism trends. In coming weeks, I will be doing similar workshops in Stockholm and Dubai, and I thought it might be helpful to post the “checklist” [...]
Two reports from the Wall Street Journal caught my eye today – the first one being that the U.S. Energy Information Administration is now saying that it expects $100 a barrel oil to be the norm for 2008 – changing expectations from just three months ago that prices would average $87 a barrel. The EIA [...]
Gideon Rachman at the FT writes about the political dimensions of globalization today, taking note that so long as the very poorest in the world do not feel the benefits of these processes, political support will continue to hamper the free flow of capital, goods, and ideas, feeding into the next wave of protectionism. The [...]
I hear a lot of convincing arguments about why we shouldn’t worry about the Kremlin’s sovereign wealth ambitions. After all, Russia’s $150 billion stabilization fund is comparatively tiny considering the returns that Gazprom and Rosneft are bringing in (though the dire lack of transparency of these state-owned firms make any estimation of capital management [...]
Is the rise of new sovereign wealth funds, and their penchant for acquiring politically strategic businesses abroad, fueling a new era of protectionism? This appears to be the case in Germany, which is working on redrafting a new law would allow Berlin to intervene in bids over foreign companies holding key stakes in national businesses. [...]
