With growing economic conflicts triggered by US President Donald Trump’s novel neo-mercantilist approach to overcoming his nation’s economic malaises, many voices now argue that bad free trade agreements are better than nothing.

After US withdrawal following Trump’s inauguration in early 2017, there is considerable pressure on signatory governments to quickly ratify the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the successor to the TPP.

(Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Nazran Zhafri Ahmad Johari)

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It is now widely recognised that Britain’s army of unpaid carers, family and friends of those with care and support needs, contribute the equivalent of over £57bn in service to our community each year. What is less appreciated is the cost that carers themselves and wider society are incurring within the current system. A new model built for the NHS by NEF Consulting places the total cost in England at between £24bn and £37bn each year, and growing.

Alex Chapman, New Economics Foundation

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Interesting article on ILO’s social protection floors and the informal sector:

“While discussions about whether effect of globalization is negative or positive on a nation’s wealth are ongoing, existence of this effect is undisputable phenomenon. However, in most cases, unqualified and informal employers experience most devastating effects of globalization in local level. International Labour Organization (ILO) has developed Social Protection Floors Approach for producing global answers to these global problems. The paper aims to investigate the efficiency of an international solution…“

The paper reviews several of the measures that States have taken with the intention of improving the sustainability of pension systems and evaluates their effectiveness. The paper highlights that many of the measures taken have had negative distributional impacts and have significantly compromised the primary function of pension systems: to provide a secure replacement income for people in old age and prevent their ability to fall into poverty.

While many governments and international institutions have framed pension reforms as an inescapable trade-off between adequacy and sustainability, unions insist that addressing the challenges of demographic ageing requires adopting a new overarching narrative, combining greater efforts to support labour market participation of excluded groups, enhanced revenue through progressive and innovative forms of taxation, and the guarantee of a decent income in retirement at the centre of this agenda.

The report can be found online in English here: https://www.ituc-csi.org/Pension-systems-adequacy-sustainability