Year LVI, 2014, Single Issue, Page 75
THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
The state is the main promoter and regulator of the economic processes that occur within its boundaries. However, a country’s continuous and balanced economic development is based mainly on its international trade in goods and services. This has become even truer since the relative stability of international politics, the opening up of national markets, the removal of customs barriers, and the digital and communications revolution created the conditions that allowed the so-called global economy to take shape.
Over the past two decades, during which some scholars have instead preferred to talk of the “semi-global economy” (referring to a world in which no nation is either totally isolated from or totally integrated with the other nations, and in which the influence of boundaries, borders and geographical and cultural distances continues to be far from insignificant[1]), the idea has emerged in liberalist thought that the state has no useful role to play and that there should be no state intervention in the economy. This has led to a rejection of the role of government industrial policy, and to the view that even mere regulation of the markets by political authorities is harmful. On the other hand, the economic and financial crisis that began in 2008 has exposed the contradictions inherentinthis model, requiring states to step in once again to support the economy through incentives of different kinds and the promotion of trade policiesdesigned to improveexports of goodsand services andreduce imports. However, this has not been a uniform trend worldwide and it has become clear that whereas some countries have the means andthe capacity to sustaintheir economic systems, others are unable to do so.
States use two types of interventions to try and protect their economies against the vagaries of international trade, while at the same time seeking to exploit its advantages. Import controls are the first type, and the best known instrument in this regard is the placing of customs barriers on imported products. This serves to discourage the sale of these products on the domestic market and thus to promote domestic production. The application of customs duties is often associated with the implementation of a system of import and export quotas, in other words the fixing of limits beyond which a given product can no longer be imported or exported. Other instruments designed to restrict foreign trade include checks and assessment tests to determine whether a given product meets the requirements to enter the domestic market: the purpose of such tests is sometimes to delay the entry into the market of products that are highly competitive compared with domestic ones. The second category of interventions, designed to support exports, includes the provision of export credits, various types of insurance, support for companies undertaking internationalisation processes, and the granting ofsubsidiesto exporting companies.
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Since the start of the crisis in 2008, many developed countries have taken steps to protect their struggling manufacturing industries against foreign commercial penetration. There has also been a general realisation that the practice of moving production activities abroad (offshoring) entails the transfer of a significant portion of knowledge that, once yielded, eventually accumulates in the places to which these manufacturing processes have been relocated. This is the mechanism that has allowed the newemerging economies to develop their manufacturing industries and, at the same time, has left many developed countries, due to this relinquishing of proprietary knowledge, less able to pursue and develop their technological objectives. It is recognition of this strategic error that lies behind the emergence of a new industrial policy trend, namely to tie the development of the manufacturing sector to specific geographical territories in accordance with the national interest. Generally speaking, in the larger developed countries industrial policy is once again being used as a normal instrument of economic governance, on an equal footing with both fiscal and monetary policy.[2]
Today, however, contrary to what was seen with the cyclical crises of the past, the developing countries, too, are players in the field and they are proving to be less open to foreign trade than in the past, a sign that they are conscious of their new, higher position in the ranking of economic and tradepowers. The European Commission’s Trade and Investment Barriers Reports to the European Council make interesting reading in this regard. These reports draw attention (at political level) to the shared commitment (on the part of the EU and the member states) that is necessary in order to overcome a series of obstacles that are preventing European countries from exporting to, or investing in, the markets of third countries. These reports which, in accordance with an undertaking contained in the Europe 2020 strategy, have been issued annually since the first one in 2011, focus on 21 identified obstacles that demand an urgent and concerted action by the Commission and the member states and they examine, in particular, the position of strategic partners such as China, India, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Russia and the United States.
In the United States, for example — the US is Europe’s most important strategic partner, receiving exports of goods and services worth 242.2 billion euros in 2010 —, numerous “Buy American" clauses were included in the country’s post-2008 stimulus package. Historically, such clauses were first introduced in the field of federal public procurement of services in the building sector in the wake of the 1929 economic collapse, i.e. with the "Buy American Act", adopted in 1933, whose aim was to promote domestic manufacturing and try and exclude foreign goods and suppliers from tenders issued by public bodies. Although provisions of this kind were partly withdrawn in 1996, in the wake of the United States’ entry into the WTO, the spirit of this law is maintained in numerous legal acts that affect tenders issued by public bodies and organisations that have nothing at all to do with the building sector. Most such provisions are also applicable to activities funded from the United States’ national budget. For example, it is compulsory to use US air carriers for flights funded from the federal budget, which means that all officials or Members of Congress on mission, and even students receiving public funding, are required to use US-owned air carriers. These protectionist measures are costly for the American taxpayer and they introduce inefficiency and unfair competition in many economic sectors.[3] Moreover, in the wake of the 2008 crisis, they were reinforced in the field of infrastructures by the introduction of two “Buy American” provisions relating to the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). These provisions specify that funds appropriated by ARRA may be used 1) for projects for the construction, alteration, maintenance or repair of public buildings, providing all the iron, steel and manufactured goods are US produced; and 2) for the procurement by the Department of Homeland Security of a detailed list of textile products (clothing, tents, cotton and natural fibers, etc.), providing the item in question is grown and processed in the United States.[4]
Since the startof the economic crisis, protectionist measures have also been adopted by the main economiesof Latin America,namely BrazilandArgentina. These have been introduced in the context of strategic industrial plans designed to boost national production by replacing imports and raising customs barriers. Argentina has a policy of re-industrialisation and import substitution that discriminates against imports. Foreign companies are further penalised by restrictions on transfer offoreign currency,dividends androyalties, while importers are obliged to comply with rules requiring them to balance their imports with exports[5] (for example, a company is allowed toimportautomotive partsproviding this can be offset by the exportation of any product produced in Argentina, such as wine). In recent years, the Argentinian government has worked actively to get certain sectors and industries to increase the domestic content of their production processes. As a result, numerous sectors and industriesare now subject todomestic content requirements, including in particular the mining sector, the automotive industry, the footwear industry, farming, machinery, building materials, medicines,chemicalsand textiles. Thisgovernment policyis also strongly felt inthe service sector (banking, insurance and media). Finally, it should be underlined that in April 2012, the Argentinian government decided to expropriate 51 per cent of the shares in the oil company YPF, all of which were held by the Spanish company Repsol, in order to pursue its goal of energy self-sufficiency.
In Brazil, on the other hand, access to public contracts has been made more difficult in thefield of information and communication technology, as well as in the health and high-tech equipment sectors. Furthermore, Brazil has also implemented a programme supporting local production of automotive components (the Inovar-Auto programme for the period 2013-2017) under which tax relief is grantedonlyto manufacturers whoinvestinR&D and to those who undertake to execute an increasing number ofmanufacturing stepsin Brazil. Thesefiscal practicesare accompaniedby the application ofnational regulations andspecific proceduresfor certifying vehicle parts, despite the fact that Brazil is party to a multilateral agreement on the mutual recognition of national motor vehicle approvals (UNECE agreement of 1958). Finally, both in 2012 and in 2013 import duties were raised on 100 tariff lines, thereby establishing specific exceptions to the Mercosur Common Tariff.
Chinese industry, too, is feeling the effects of the global crisis. For the first time in seven years its exports have fallen, by 2.2 per cent, while its imports have plunged by 21.3 per cent, the worst performance of the past decade. The sectors hardest hit by this trade slowdown are the very ones on which China has built its fortune: light industry, industrial machinery and electronics, which together account for a third of the country’s exports. The increases in the cost of labour per employee (which in 2003 averaged 1,740 dollars a year, but in 2009 topped the 4,000 dollar mark) and in the cost of transport (customs duties on containers from China have increased fivefold) have ledAmerican and European companiestofindnew areasin which to outsourceproduction. For this reason, China is raising higher and higher trade barriers to shore up its domestic economy against foreign commercial penetration: this is in line with China’s national industrial strategy, which isaimed atachievingautonomyand primacyinallstrategic economic sectors (especially the high-tech ones).[6]
A clear example of this orientation was China’s adoption, in 2011, of a mechanismallowing it to controlmergers and acquisitionsinvolvingforeign investors; thismechanism gives it the capacity to blockforeignacquisitions for reasons of national security. The problem, however, is not so much the adoption of this mechanism per se — mechanisms of this kind also exist in some EU member states — but rather the breadth of its application (both in terms of sectors, and the definition of national security), which goes well beyondthe agreed OECD principles. Furthermore, China, like Brazil, Argentina and India, tends to apply domestic content requirements in the sector of industrial production, but without rendering them publicinnational or local legislation, and making them far more sophisticatedand less visiblethan in the past. In recent years, public procurementhas also becomea problem area. In China this sector is essentially regulated by two laws: the Government Procurement Law (covering contracts with an estimated market value of 183 billion dollars) and the Tendering and Bidding Law (estimated market value: 1135 billion dollars). In some cases,local authoritieshave stipulated domestic content requirements as high as 70 per cent. In practice, the “domestic products” requirements in tender documentation and the lack of clear guidance on what constitutes such products have prevented foreign-owned companies established in China from having equal access to public contracts.
Finally, in a world in which fossil energy resourcesare running out, it is becoming crucial to possess both the technology for renewable energy, and the necessary raw materials. These include rare metals (a group of 17chemical elements better known as rare earth metals or REMs), which are indispensable in modern industry, the energy sectors, the formulation of new materials, energy saving, environmental protection, and the aeronautical and space travel industries, as well as forfurnishing information and datainelectronic format. China, with its share of 97 per cent, is currently the world’s largest producer of REMs. Bayan Obo, situated in the highlands of Mongolia and controlled by the Chinese army, is the world's largest rare earth mine. The Americans and the Europeans, on the other hand, have opted not to produce these types of metals because the mines are highly labour intensive and the extraction process has been found to be environmentally polluting. Indeed, the USA, the EU and Japan depend entirely on Chinese imports.
Having become the world’s leading REM producer, the People’s Republic of China declared this a strategic field, thereby restricting the entry of foreign companies into the sector. And to make sure domestic demand can be met, the Chinese government has established amaximum annualquotafor the exportation ofrare earths and, in 2011, sharplyincreased the level oftaxation on them.
According to data collected in 2012 by the European Commission, the EU depends entirely on China for 16 of the 17 REMs. This means that Beijing can also controlexport prices in this sector, which are usuallyat least 100 per centhigherthan the domesticpricespaid by Chinese companies. Indeed, in the past decade, the prices in this field have soared, recording increases ranging from 500 per cent to 1,000 per cent. This phenomenon has led many European businesses to choose to stop producing certain articles, or to relocate to China so as to have easier access to the necessary raw materials and benefit from lower production costs (the American company Apple is a case in point). The USA, India, Australia, EU and Japan have all taken steps to break China’s monopolyof this production sector,looking for newmines (Afghanistan, Malaysia, Australia) and promoting recycling. China, on the other hand, anticipating a situationofincreasing demandanddecreasingsupply, and wanting to prepare strategic reserves of these minerals, is stepping up its controls and taking over small companies.[7]
The European Commission, in its Trade and Investment Barriers Report 2012, claimed that the measures identified as obstacles to European foreign trade were introduced in 2008-2009 as a result of the need to counteract the negative effect, on global demand, of the financial and economic crisis. Instead, the recent wave of restrictive measures, especially in the emerging economies, has to be interpreted differently. These measures are part of long-term national industrial plans that are “aimed at structurally changing the production pattern of national economies”.[8]
In March 2011, China adopted its 12th Five Year Plan in which it attaches priority importance to the provision of public support to certain “strategic” sectors (clean energy, electrical vehicles, ICT and broadband, pharmaceuticals industries), also “through steering investment (often in the form of mandatory requirements for technology transfer) and financing”.[9] India has introduced a new National Manufacturing Policy through which it aims to reshape the country’s “economic and employment landscape” by increasing the manufacturing industry's share of the GDP from 16 per cent to 25 per cent by 2022 and focusing on indigenous production. National industrialisation plans have also been adopted in Brazil (Plano Brasil Maior), Argentina (Plano Estrategico Industrial 2020), and Russia (limited to the automotive sector).[10]
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The 2008-2013 economic and financial crisis has reduced both the capacity of the banking system to provide credit to businesses (especially for long-term investments) and, above all, domestic demand: businesses are actually hit harder by lack of customers and clients than by lack of credit. This is why all countries combinetheirindustrial planswithaggressiveforeigntrade policies: in times of crisis, it becomes essential to conquer and consolidate new markets in order to drive economic recovery through exports. Industrialised and emerging countries are starting to engage in a (for the moment silent) competition, fielding institutional players that had remained quiescent in the pre-crisis period.
These institutions are known as export credit agencies (ECAs) and while they assume different forms in different countries (government agencies, publicly or privately owned insurance companies), they all exist to fulfil the same specific purpose: to support and protect national exports by issuing guarantees — covered by the state budget — where private institutions are unable to do so (often for large infrastructure investments in depressed parts of the world, or for supplies of aircraft, ships and military equipment).
The first such agency was founded in the UK (ECGD, Export Credit Guarantee Department) after the First World War, to support the reconversion of the war economy and respond to the collapse in domestic demand: the first area of public intervention was that of the provision of export credit insurance, i.e. guaranteescovered by thestate budgetfor thoseexporting on credit. All the industrialised economies soon followed the British example, equipping themselves with public agencies or insurance companies (COFACE in France, Euler-Hermes in Germany, Export-Import USA Bank in the United States, Atradius Dutch Company in the Netherlands, SACE in Italy, and so on) as a means of stimulatingforeign demandthroughthe granting of credit or simply the provision of private credit insurance backed by state budget guarantees. It must be clear, from the outset, that this is a service that states provide in the absence of private operators able to fulfil similar functions. Historically, ECAs played a decisive role only in the wake of the Second World War, the period of the Bretton Woods agreements and the generalglobaleconomic recovery, supporting large companies in their international expansion processes. Theeconomic growthof the 1960s, however, concealedthe danger that ECAs might be used as means of indirectly subsidising domestic enterprises with low-cost loans and insurance. Eventually, numerous multilateral conferences led some OECD member countries to sign several agreements torestrict or regulate theaction of ECAs.
Within the European Economic Community, it was quickly realised that the actions of ECAs conflicted with the rules on state aid in intra-community trade and with the EC's common external trade policy. Nevertheless, the process of regulating the sector proved long and arduous, due to the governments’ unwillingness to relinquish control, and limit the scope, of a valuable instrument of foreign trade policy. In the early 1990s, satisfactory results in intra-Community trade had been achieved only in the short-term credit market (i.e. that of loans with terms of under two years), with the states prohibited from financially supporting ECAs, thereby leaving thecredit insurance marketto private operators. The states nevertheless retained the faculty to intervene in their own markets in the event of a lack of private operators. Instead, in external trade and the provision of medium- to long-term credit (especially for largeinfrastructure projects), the EU member states continued to enjoyalmost totalautonomyinmanaging theirECAs. This latter situation reflects the lack of any Europeaninstitutional powerinmatters of foreign policy, which, were it present, would be thenatural basisforacommonexternal trade policy equipped with its own instruments.
In the 1990s and 2000s the world economy underwent a period of tremendous growth. Different countries began aspiring to become regional, if not global, economic powers. But the 2008 crisis brought this growth to an abrupt halt (especially in the advanced countries) and the first manifestation of the crisis was the insufficiency of thecreditsuppliedby banks fortradeand investment.
According to a 2010 report by the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade “ECAs collectively account for the world's largest source of official financing for private-sector projects. ECAs' underwriting of large industrial and infrastructure projects in developing countries topples several times the combined annual funding of all Multilateral Development Banks. Regarding short term financing (below two years; mainly the financing of trade operations), ECAs in 2007 supported about 10 per cent of world trade, representing about 1.4 trillion USD in transactions and investments.”[11] However, whereas export support programmes were once the preserve of OECD countries (United States, EU, Japan, South Korea and Australia), the economic crisis triggered a rapid growth of new international players and new programmes supporting the internationalisation of businesses, which soon outweighed the OECD countries’ ECAs, both in number and influence.
An alternative sphere of action for the OECD countries is represented by all these countries’ programmes for export support funding and foreign direct investments (FDIs) that are not regulated within the OECD itself. The globalisation of the world economy has led to a radical change in the meaning of the term “exportation”. In the past, theproductionof goods wasconcentratedinageographical senseandvertically integratedwithin companies. The division of labour took place within the company or within its single facilities. Instead, in the newparadigm,manufacturing processes areincreasinglybroken down into separate steps,whichare carried out bydifferent companiesindifferent countries. For this reason, logistics strategy and planning are becoming increasingly important: this is shown by the increasing evolution of global value chains (GVCs). In this setting, FDIs acquire considerable importance as a toolfor the acquisition offoreign companiesin accordance with the value chain strategy.
The activities of EDC (Canadian), KFW IPEX (German), and NEXI and JBIC (both Japanese) are part of the alternative sphere of action mentioned above. These organisations provide foreign investment support within their respective economies by acting as global market players, i.e. by providing their own companiesabroadwithsupport and assistancein foreign markets. Activities of this kind amounted to a value of approximately 110 billion US dollars in 2012. The Canadian government, for example, introduced a new trade creation programme; in other words, the Canadian ECA, named Export Development Canada (EDC), was given the powers necessary to develop three areasconsidered strategicfor domestic companies: the aviation industry, clean technology and infrastructures. “In the aviation industry, EDC will provide support for the new Bombardier C-Series aircraft. In the clean technology field, it will be required to identify international players, especially in developing countries, that need clean technologies. Finally, as regards infrastructures, EDC will focuson the benefits offered by the plan for infrastructure development in India”.[12]
The United States on the other hand, through its ECA (EX-IM USA), supports itsexporting companiesbyopening lines of credit that have been denied by the banks (thus stepping outside the field of simpleguaranteesand insurance): in 2011-2012 it provided loans worth 30 billion dollars through direct lending activities.
A second alternative sphere of action, in this case for countries outside the OECD (Russia, China, India and Brazil), is that of the ECAs of these emerging countries. In 2012, these new agencies providedfinancing andexport credit insuranceworth an estimated 70 billion US dollars.
Together, the activities of these two alternative spheres far exceed the activities of the regulated ECAs operating within the OECD countries (around 120 billion US dollars), which include the provision of export credit insurance.[13]
The most alarming data, however, come from China. According to the European Commission, China, despite having joined the WTO, has refused to sign the OECD agreements on export credits, even though the WTO agreements require its members to comply with the provisions of the OECD. During the 2008-2013 crisis, the Chinese government, due to the slump in its exports, made extensive use of “export credits not in conformity with the OECD/WTO disciplines to boost its national champions’ exports in capital-intensive, often high-tech sectors”. Furthermore, many industries in China “are subsidised in a non-transparent way, including through the activities of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and banks, as well as through the provision of subsidised land, materials and energy”.[14]
One of the economic sectors most heavily subsidised by the Chinese government is the steel industry. Chinese steel production tripled between 2000 and 2005. Data updated in 2009 showed that China produced nearly 50 per cent of the world’s steel; but the latest 2013 estimate showed that Chinese production amounted to over seven times the steel produced in the United States. The lack of transparency makes it difficult to arrive at a precise estimate, in quantity terms, of the Chinese regime’s subsidy of the steel sector. However, a study conducted by Usha Haley and George Haley and published in the Harvard Business Review in 2013 revealed that since its entry into the WTO, China has annually subsidised 20 per cent of its entire production capacity. According to these authors, between 2000 and 2007 the Chinese regimeprovided 20 billion eurosinenergy subsidiestoits steel industry. Because it is subsidised, “Chinesesteelis sold for25percent lessthan US and European steel”.[15]
China also attaches considerable importance to the destination, in terms of geographical areas, of itscredit and financing. Africa certainly has a preferential role in China’s external industrial and trade policies.
The China Exim (Export Import) Bank provided Africa with 5 billion dollars in loans from 2007 to 2009 alone, whilst loans from Exim (the Chinese ECA) totalled 20 billion dollars. For its part, the China Development Bank announced, in September 2010, that it had already earmarked5.6 billion dollars to fundprojectsinover thirtyAfrican states, while its loans, in total, probably exceed the 10 billion dollar mark.
Beijing’s growing attention to Africa is part of its market penetration plan, whose aim is both to guarantee China’s access to new markets and to acquire controlof Africa’sconsiderablemineral and agricultural resources. The Chinese plan can be summed up as aid for trade: “aiding” the infrastructural development of Africa while securing “trade” for Chinese products. Chinese export credits are channelled into the construction of infrastructures in African countries that are emerging from wars andperiods ofendemic violence; the other side of the coin is that these infrastructures (roads, bridges, railways, government buildings, etc.) are built largely (70 per cent) by Chinese construction firms and Chinese workers. To secure the repayment of these debts, China often asks these countries to sign off-take agreements. This is a technique commonly referred to as the “Angola model”;[16] countries signing off-take agreements agree to repay the loan they have received through the supply of primary goods that they produce, such as oil. In Angola, the China Exim Bank undertook to provide around 14.5 billion dollars in funding (to be repaid in oil) for the country’s post-war reconstruction. The programme included around a hundred projects in the fields of energy, water, health, education, telecommunications, fisheries and public works.
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The EU, in the present crisis situation, cannot act in the same way as the United States and China because it has neither the structure nor the powers to implement external trade policies of this kind. In fact, the EU’s confederal structure creates two problems for its member states. First of all, there is the technical impossibility of setting up a European system of ECAs on account of the direct relationship that exists between ECAs and state budgets. Indeed, the value of the activities carried out by ECAs (the provision of loans, insurance and guarantees) increases proportionally to the size and quality of the state budgets that back them. Therefore, if a European ECA were to be established now it would have to be created either using the meagre EU budget (entirely insufficient to cope with this task), or by pooling the state budgets of the member states belonging to a network of reinsurance treaties, which would reduce its operational effectiveness. Second, the political division of the European countries has exposed them to the negative effects of the sovereign debt crisis — only temporarily overcome — and forced the peripheral eurozone countries to endure soaring interest rates on their public debts, a situation that has further aggravated their debt crisis. Furthermore, thesovereign debt crisisin the peripheral countries has spilled over into the banking system and therefore had a considerable impact on the cost of credit: all this has progressively undermined the capacity of the states hit by this type of crisis both to support exports with public resources, and to provide export guarantees covered by their own budgets (due to falling sovereign ratings). The changed economic scenario has created large differences in credit availability as it has reintroduced elements of competitive disadvantage between the European countries and within the OECD area. Countries like Italy and Spain have seen their export shares decreasing, to the benefit of those of countries such as Germany and the Nordic countries which are favoured by their betterfinancial situation. In this context, the European institutions have found themselves to be powerless, given that neither the rules on state aid, nor those on the common trade policy, as formulated in the Lisbon Treaty, are sufficient to correct this situation.
In conclusion, it would be desirable, in Europe, to see the immediate establishment of a European ECA in order to overcome the problems set out above: both to ensure that exporting companieshaveequal accessto foreign markets, and to give Europe an institutional player with the same powers of intervention as those of the USA and China. But to achieve these objectives it is necessary to resolve the political problem that lies upstream, namely the creation of a eurozone federal budget funded with own resources, politically controlled by federal political institutions, and able, replacing the role of the member states’ national budgets, to provide export credit guarantees.
Davide Negri
[1] Claudio Dematté, Fabrizio Perretti, Strategie di internazionalizzazione, Milan, Egea, 2003.
[2] Centro Studi di Confindustria, Scenari industriali n. 6, In Italia la manifattura si restringe. I Paesi avanzati puntano sul territorio, June 2014.
[3] European parliamentary questions of 29 January 2004, E-3601/2003, Answer given by Mr Lamy on behalf of the Commission. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getAllAnswers.do?reference=E-2003-3601&language=EN
[4] The European Commission’s Trade and Investment Barriers Report 2012 to the European Council, p. 7.
[5] ibid., p. 13.
[6] Daniele Cellamare, Nima Baheli, La penetrazione cinese in Africa, Rivista Militare, 2013, p. 15. http://www.difesa.it/SMD_/CASD/IM/IASD/65sessioneordinaria/Documents
/La_penetrazione_cinese_in_Africa.pdf.
[7] Daniele Cellamare, Nima Baheli, op. cit., pp. 24-27.
[8] The European Commission’s Trade and Investment Barriers Report 2013 to the European Council, p. 13.
[9] ibid., p. 14.
[10] ibid., p. 15.
[11] Working document on Application of certain guidelines in the field of officially supported export credits. Committee on International Trade of the European Parliament. Rapporteur: Yannick Jadot, 24 June 2010.
[12] Various authors, Il paradigma della nuova internazionalizzazione in Italia. Il ruolo di SACE, 2013, SACE working paper n. 16 p. 28.
[13] Data and considerations drawn from Export-Import Bank of the United States, Report to the U.S. Congress on Export Credit Competition and the Export-Import Bank of the United States. June 2013, Washington D.C., pp. 139 onwards.
[14] The European Commission’s Trade and Investment Barriers Report 2012 to the European Council, p. 12.
[15] Data cited by: Heide B. Malhotra, Commercio mondiale, la Cina vuole imporre le sue regole, EpochTimes Italia, http://epochtimes.it/news/commercio-mondiale-la-cina-vuole-imporre-le-sue-regole---125214.
[16] Daniele Cellamare, Nima Baheli, op. cit., p. 118.