Trade and the global economy

The increased frequency of conferences on international economic topics towards the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s suggests a shift in the relative importance given to these topics compared to foreign and security policy questions. European integration was seen as offering a means of responding to international economic competition from Japan and the USA in the 1980s and as a response to the instability in international monetary relations under floating exchange rates post-Bretton Woods, especially when economic co-operation with the US was not forthcoming. In the absence of a deep common economic framework, the EU and US appeared at times to have rival rather than complementary interests. Whereas the US has solid security treaties with both Japan and most European countries, Japan-EU relations remained looser, focusing on just trade and investment. With the benefit of hindsight, it might be argued that had there been greater inclusion and thus buy-in from emerging countries in international economic decision-making, some of today’s difficulties, including the lack of progress in international trade negotiations, might have posed less of a structural problem in the global economy.