New Zealand is keeping pressure on the EU as formal talks to set an agenda for negotiating a free trade agreement are a few weeks away.

In addition to joining the previous World Trade Organisation (WTO), participating in a new-generation Free Trade Agreement, such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), will be an opportunity for Vietnam to continue to improve its economic institution, including the socialist-oriented market economic institution.

The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement is set to be inked over the next few months, and then await official ratification, with huge benefits and opportunities laying ahead for Vietnam and EU investors in the country.

In her first interview of 2019, the Prime Minister merely offered MPs the same reasons to defeat her agreement.

President Xi Jinping hailed China's "reconstructive reforms" in a New Year speech, but the sorely needed changes could be put on ice in favour of averting a potentially devastating economic downturn.

Weak sales at Apple and Cargill, U.S. giants of technology and agriculture, may be the clearest sign yet that President Donald Trump’s quest to reset world trade carries costs at home and could isolate the United States as the increasingly fragile engine for global economic growth.

Much attention has been paid to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which officially came into effect on Sunday. Without the US, the 11-member free trade agreement, formerly known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), now covers 13 percent of the global economy.

The European Union plans to maintain the steel import limits until July 16, 2021, saying it has concluded definitively that the 25% levy on foreign steel imposed last March by US President Donald Trump on national-security grounds caused worldwide shipments of the metal to be diverted to Europe.

Japan’s government will keep a close eye on looming risks to a global economic recovery as it guides policy, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in an interview aired by public broadcaster NHK on Sunday.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador launched an ambitious plan Saturday to stimulate economic activity on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border, reinforcing his country's commitment to manufacturing and trade despite recent U.S. threats to close the border entirely.