China and the European Union (EU) are not only each other’s most important trading partners, but also the starting and ending points of the “Belt and Road” initiative respectively. As a result, both sides rely heavily on the healthy development of China-EU economic and trade relations. By comparing the cases of trade disputes between China and the EU under the WTO dispute settlement mechanism over the past years since China’s accession to the WTO, the paper provides an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of trade frictions between China and the EU, the main points of contention and causes. It comes to the conclusion that China participates in conflict resolution as a responder in a significant percentage of cases, although the success rate is low. The steel industry is the most common source of trade conflict between China and the EU. Meanwhile, anti-dumping and raw material export restrictions issues are the most important trade disputes. Furthermore, the paper discovered that the underlying causes of trade friction between China and the EU revolve mainly around three aspects: China’s continued trade surplus with the EU, the narrowing gap between the economic strengths of China and the EU, and the shortcomings of WTO rules and dispute settlement mechanisms. To push bilateral relations to a new high point, China and the EU should look to the future and appropriately resolve existing bilateral disputes on the basis of mutual benefit.

Keywords: China-EU trade; Trade Dispute; WTO dispute settlement mechanism

The development of agricultural global value chains (AGVCs) has led to the rapid development of intermediate goods trade, therefore, agricultural products need to cross between several countries, so that more different technical standards such as SPS/TBT between countries have been imposed by countries around the world with regard to the quality and safety of agricultural products, which lead the burden of trade costs increase prominent. Therefore, based on the bilateral trade value added data in the OECD inter-country input-output database, combing the social network analysis and UNCTAD database from 2010 to 2018, measure the positions of countries in the agricultural global value chains and the standard differences of SPS/TBT among countries. We use the gravity model to empirically inspect the impact of the SPS/TBT standards heterogeneity between countries (regions) on the AGVCs position. We find: (1) structural differences in SPS/TBT standards among countries negatively affect the centrality of GVCs; (2) the negative impact of standards difference on the total and forward centrality is more serious than backward centrality; (3) The negative impact of the SPS/TBT difference is more pronounced in developing countries.

Keywords: SPS/TBT; standard differences; global value chain position; agriculture

The essence of this paper was to explore how trade protectionism affected unemployment and economic growth of Nigeria from 1990 to 2020. Trade protectionism was measured using the tariff rate for all products while unemployment and economic growth were measured by the unemployment rate and the growth rate of gross domestic product respectively. The study utilized the autoregressive distributed lag approach, the impulse response function, and the dynamic ordinary least squares in the estimation. The key findings from the study are that trade protectionism has a positive and significant short run effect on economic growth but a negative and significant long run effect on growth. Also, trade protectionism has a negative and significant effect on unemployment during the study period. The implication of these findings is that trade protectionism is desirable within the Nigerian economy as it promotes growth and reduces unemployment within the economy. The findings therefore support the infant industry argument for trade protectionism. The paper therefore recommended that the Nigerian economy should be driven with some forms of protectionism doctrine in the short term until the economic structure of the country is strongly developed to compete favourable with developed countries of the world.

Keywords: Trade Openness, Trade Protectionism, Unemployment, Economic Growth.
JEL Classification: F14, F43, F44, O24, O47.

This study investigated the impact of infrastructure financing on economic growth in Nigeria for the period 1991-2021. The specific objectives of the study were: to investigate the impact of government economic infrastructures spending on the growth
of real gross domestic product in Nigeria, to determine the impact of government social infrastructure spending on the growth of real gross domestic product in Nigeria, and to investigate the impact of deficit financing on the growth of real gross domestic product in Nigeria. The study used time series data sources from the CBN statistical Bulletin. The study adopted the ex post facto research design and employed the Vector Autoregression System Equation (VAR) method to analyze the results. The empirical result indicates that government economic infrastructure financing has no significant impact on economic growth in Nigeria, government social infrastructure financing significantly impacts on economic growth in Nigeria, and government capital expenditure significantly impacts on economic growth in Nigeria. The policy recommendations following the findings are: there is need for the government to embark on aggressive expansion programs on economic infrastructures; and there is need to ensure that infrastructures provided are accompanied by proper maintenance mechanism to ensure optimal functioning and benefits.

Keywords: Infrastructure Financing, Economics of Scale, Deficit financing, Real gross Domestic Product.