Globale Ordnung im Umbruch: Perspektiven für ein faires Wirtschaftssystem

07.07.2025
C3-Radio
Globale Ordnung im Umbruch: Perspektiven für ein faires Wirtschaftssystem

Wie kann eine gerechtere Weltwirtschaftsordnung aussehen – und wer könnte sie gestalten? In dieser Folge berichten wir vom Workshop „New International Economic Order (NIEO) revisited“, der im Juni 2025 im C3 in Wien stattfand. Vertreter*innen aus Wissenschaft, Politik und Zivilgesellschaft diskutierten dort über alte Forderungen und neue Perspektiven für globale Handelsbeziehungen und wirtschaftliche Gerechtigkeit.

Wir sprechen mit:

Josè Miguel Ahumada (Universidad de Chile) über Handelsverträge, Rohstoffe und wirtschaftliche Souveränität,

Richard Kozul-Wright (ehem. UNCTAD) über Reformen von IWF, Weltbank und der globalen Schuldenarchitektur,

Ho-Fung Hung (Johns Hopkins University) über Chinas Rolle im Globalen Süden und das geopolitische Kräftespiel zwischen USA, EU und China.

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 Host: Klemens Lobnig
Stimmen: José Miguel Ahumada (Universidad de Chile), Richard Kozul-Wright (University of London), Ho-fung Hung (John Hopkins University)

Musik by Alisia from pixabay 

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Transcript

Klemens: Hallo und herzlich willkommen zu einer neuen Ausgabe vom C3-Radio. Ich bin Klemens Lobnig und ich freue mich, dass Sie wieder mit dabei sind! Heute nehmen wir Sie mit zu einem besonderen Workshop, der Ende Juni im C3 in Wien stattgefunden hat. Dort haben sich zwei Tage lang Vertreterinnen und Vertreter aus der Forschung, der politischen Praxis und dem aktivistischen Sektor eingefunden und sich mit Fragen beschäftigt, die heute mehr Relevanz den je haben:

Wie könnte eine neue, gerechtere Weltwirtschaftsordnung aussehen? Und vor allem: Wer könnte sie gestalten?

Klemens: Beginnen wir mit einem kurzen Überblick über die Debatte, die im Zusammenhang mit einer neuen, gerechten Weltwirtschaftsordnung geführt wird. Die „New International Economic Order“ - kurz NIEO - ist kein neues Konzept. Schon in den 1970er Jahren forderten viele Staaten des Globalen Südens mehr Mitsprache im internationalen Wirtschaftssystem. Doch damals scheiterte der Versuch an den Machtverhältnissen.

Heute, rund 50 Jahre später, sind viele Probleme geblieben – und haben sich weiter verschärft: Klimakrise, Schuldenkrisen, globale Ungleichheiten. Gleichzeitig befinden wir uns in einer Zeit wachsender geopolitischer Spannungen und einer zunehmenden Blockbildung zwischen den USA und China.

Vor diesem Hintergrund hat sich also im Rahmen des Workshops ein internationales Netzwerk in Wien getroffen um zu debattieren. Das Ziel des Workshops war es, sich auszutauschen, kritisch Bilanz zu ziehen und neue, kooperative Ideen für eine Weltwirtschaftsordnung zu entwickeln – jenseits von Machtpolitik und einseitigen Abhängigkeiten.

Im Mittelpunkt standen dabei Themen wie Handel, globale Institutionen wie WTO und Weltbank – aber auch dekoloniale Perspektiven auf wirtschaftliche Machtverhältnisse. Am Rande des Workshops habe ich mir mehrere Teilnehmer geschnappt um mit ihnen kurze Gespräche zu führen. 

Beginnen wir mit Josè Miguel Ahumada von der Universidad de Chile. Ahumada war Staatssekretär für internationale Wirtschaftsbeziehungen in Chile und hat das aktuellste Freihandelsabkommen zwischen der EU und Chile federführend mitverhandelt. Wir wollten von ihm wissen: Welche Rolle spielen neue Handelsverträge in Lateinamerika und wie kann wirtschaftliche Souveränität für die Länder in Lateinamerika gewahrt bleiben? 

🎧 O-Ton Anfang: Interview Josè Miguel Ahumada (ca. 7m)

00:02:48 Lobnig
So you were directly involved in the negotiations of the modernized EU-Chile Free Trade Agreement. What were the main interests at stake and what would you say was achieved or perhaps missed in the final outcome?

00:03:01 Ahumada
The EU has, on the one hand, the necessity to modernize the agreement with Chile in order to show new elements in their negotiation strategies, like environment, labor issues and so on. But also the EU needed to show something to their constituencies. At that time, they were negotiating the agreement with Mexico and Mercosur. None of them were like getting very a lot of progress. Now the Mercosur is OK, but at that time was not sure. So the agreement with Chile was very important for that issue in particular. But also because the EU needed to secure the process and the access to lithium and other critical minerals in which Chile is very intense in producing, like copper. So one of the main elements of the agreement was the chapter on critical minerals. That from Chile's perspective, it has a lot of impact on our policy space, particularly in the issues of export pricing. That one was one of the most important elements of discussion. Chile wanted to reduce the impact of that element and the EU, of course, wanted to put more emphasis on that topic. So what we did was to reduce the capacity or, or to minimize the impact of that article in Chile's policy space. I think we, most of it, we, we obtain what we wanted, though there's always more possibility to expand our policy space. But politics is not about what you wish, but also the capacities that you have to put your agenda in. That was one of the elements. The second one was about the investment agreements. One of the key elements, one of the key problems nowadays, I think, about trade agreements, is the ISDS mechanism. The investors state dispute settlements. The EU wanted to innovate on that and has another proposal to reform the ISDS, which is the investment court. It's an alternative mechanism. And I think it's better than the bilateral investment treaties that Latin America and Chile in particular has signed with the EU since 1990s. But it still has a lot of of the old investment agreements, a lot of it. So I think it was a nice step, but it's not near what we need in order to secure the policy space for developing countries. So I think that was the second most important issue of the EU agreement with Chile. And the first one is critical mineral chapters. The second one is the investment agreement. And the third one I think is that the the EU needed to gain more influence on Latin America. China is getting a lot of attention because I don't know the trade deal, the, the trade relation with China is very, very intense in, in Latin America. 40% of our trade in Chile goes is with China, 40%.  o the EU needed to gain more influence somehow to Latin America. And the way that they could do it is through trade agreements, not through more investment, not through more developmental policies, but through this agreement. So I think in, in synthesis, it was an agreement that we were able to protect certain policy space, not all of it that we wanted in terms of trade impact is going to be very, very low. We should face it. Chile has a trade agreement with the the EU since 2003 where 90% of our tariffs are zero. And this, this new modernization goes from 90 to 96 I think. So it's very marginal, the impact in terms of trade flows.
 
 

00:06:58 Lobnig
The global South is calling for more equity in the international economic order. So how would new trade partnerships between Latin America and Europe or other countries or blocks have to be designed to advance this goal?

00:07:11 Ahumada
Yes, I think that in order to think an alternative global trade architecture or reforms in this trade architecture, we need to think about what is happening now? What countries or trade agreements are doing? What experience we can put emphasis on? We can shed some light on it in order to take from that experiences from to, you know, in order to rethink the trade architecture. One of the things I think is very important is what the BRICS are doing, particularly in their Development Bank proposal. I think that can be a good element to consider in order to propose alternative mechanism in the trade architecture, in the global trade architecture. The Development Bank to expand the financial pro development institutions like the BRICS and other regional blocs are doing. The second one is to think about trade architecture that excludes ISDS mechanisms from their agreement. Like for example the African Free trade area is excluding the ISDS. So I think that is a good step and we should learn from that in order to think alternative regimes in terms of trade relations. The third element would be to rethink and to bring back the old debate about technology transfer measures. I think that the debate that happened during the 1970s, where Global South countries were discussing a New International Economic Order that put, among other elements, the need to establish a multilateral regime, focus on technology transfer from multinational enterprises to Latin American or the global South countries. I think that is something quite important, which implies conditionality measures, which imply implies that foreign direct investment should reinvest part of their profit in R&D in the local territories, should imply environmental laws and so on. That is happening nowadays not only in very special countries, but the EU is discussing those kind of conditionalities concerning Chinese investments. The US includes certain conditionalities during the government of Biden in the IRA, in the CHIP Act. So I think this is something that is already being discussed in the global North. And why not think about global South countries creating an architecture that includes those elements of technology transfer in their agreements? And lastly, and I think this is also quite, quite important, is the intellectual property regime. Nowadays we should go back to think about patents and intellectual property as intellectual monopolies that reduce the capacity of technological diffusion to the rest of the economies. Most of those patterns are focused on North, northern countries in the core countries. So I think to an urgent thing that we should do is to reconsider the scope and the limits of the patent system. And we have examples what the India and South Africa try to do in the in the WTO when they propose a chips waiver to reduce the patent, you know, in order to exclude certain key elements for fighting COVID, excluded from the patent system to diffuse those technologies, those vaccines to the population is something that we should take as an example. It didn't, it didn't win, you know, the northern countries were against it. But I think it was an example of what we should do in the future. So I think in in synthesis, a kind of trade reform, the multilateral level that can learn from the experience of trade relations that are happening nowadays should include the example of developmental banks that the BRICS is doing. Should includes the elements of reforming or excluding the ISDS system from this trade architecture, should include the elements of technology transfer and lastly a reform of the intellectual property rights system.

🎧 O-Ton Ende: Interview Josè Miguel Ahumada (ca. 7m)

Klemens: Josè Miguel Ahumada zeigt im Interview deutlich, wie wichtig es ist, Handel und seine Funktionsweisen neu zu denken und sich kritisch mit den Machtstrukturen auseinanderzusetzen, die im aktuellen Welthandelssystem vorherrschen. Damit diese Machstrukturen aufgebrochen werden können, benötigt es auch eine Reformierung internationaler Organisationen wie der Welthandelsorganisation WTO. Darüber, wie solche Reformen aussehen können, habe ich mit Richard Kozul-Wrigt gesprochen. Kozul-Wright war viele Jahre bei der UNCTAD tätig und sich dort intensiv mit globaler Wirtschaftsgovernance beschäftigt. Außerdem hat er gemeinsam mit dem Development Policy-Experten Kevin Gallagher einen vielbeachteten Artikel geschrieben, in dem er sich für ein neues Bretton Woods System einsetzt.

🎧 O-Ton Anfang: Interview Richard Kozul-Wright (ca. 6m)

00:02:16 Lobnig
In your proposal for a new "Bretton Woods system", you and Kevin Gallagher call for stronger international coordination and public financing mechanisms. What are the core pillars of this vision and how realistic is it's implementation in the current political climate?

00:02:35 Kozul-Wright
Yeah. I think there are things that can be done to the system as it currently is structured, which would make it more accommodating and developing country problems. I mean to take one example, the use of special drawing rights, which is this financial asset that is under the control of the International Monetary Fund, which is aimed at giving to all countries a kind of more increased access to liquidity to deal with any kinds of shock, unexpected shocks that they face. It was originally intended only for advanced economies. It was untapped. That ensured that it would have a universal reach, that is developing country members of the fund would have access to special drawing rights. But the problem is that the allocation of special drawing rights is based upon the contribution of member states, So it most of them go to the countries that need it the least, which is the advanced economies. And I think you can reform. I mean that's an area where which is ripe for a more sensible kind of reform. And it's just changing what you have already in place to make it a more more accommodating of developing country needs. And there's a number of other areas of that nature. But there are big gaps in the system that need to be filled. I think if we're going to have the kind of system that we want to see in place of which the probably the biggest is around the debt issue. Again, this goes back a long way. Ung Tad was working on debt issues in the 1960s and the, and the challenges that accumulated debt was posing in terms of servicing and, and, and related problems. And there's been attempts to reform that over the years. There's been improvements in in bond contracts and, and, and other things that that to a certain extent have made the system somewhat better, but has not addressed the real heart of the problem, which is that once developing countries get into a debt crisis, there's no there's no set of rules. There's no over overseeing mechanism that allows developing countries to work themselves out of that kind of crisis in a measured and fair and transparent way. And we've argued and we continue to argue that you do need a specialized system to deal with that kind of problem, some kind of legislative mechanism. And, and in the absence of that developing the situation that we now see, the developing countries are under constant permanent fiscal pressures when it comes to the servicing of their debts. And it essentially obstructs them from from making the kinds of broader investments that they need to meet development challenges. So that's a real, that's a systemic problem the advanced economies continue to resist. They don't want to see it because they're the interest of their own private creditors is what drives their international agenda at this moment in time. So, you know, that's the challenge. I mean, in terms of the, the question of the react, the realism of it, it's a political question. And right now I, I don't think advanced economies are in the mood to make the kind of systemic changes that I think are needed to, to get the system back on track.
 
 

00:06:11 Lobnig
So the multilateral system, as you said, seems increasingly fragmented: with institutions like the IMF and the World Bank facing both international criticism and external competition. Do you see opportunities for reform?

00:06:30 Kozul-Wright
The kind of reform we see are the incremental at a time that we need systemic change. This is the real, I mean, I talked about development issues when you add the climate challenge on, on top of the development challenge and, and I would argue you can, you can no longer separate these two things. Developing countries have to continue to press for the, for, for what they need from a development point of view as they come to term with the decarbonisation and adaptation challenges that, that, that, that come with the climate challenge. And it's it's just very difficult to see how the multilateral system, given the geopolitics of the moment can do that in any sort of meaningful time. For this is an urgent, these are, the problem is these are urgent issues. That is, they are already damaging developing countries, both the debt issue and the climate issue. So there's an urgency to these and there is no political momentum to address that within a meaningful time frame right now. That is, that's the real kind of dilemma I think we face.
 
 

🎧 O-Ton Ende: Interview Richard Kozul-Wright (ca. 6m)

Klemens: Während Richard Kozul-Wright vor allem auf die Reform bestehender Institutionen wie der WTO und Weltbank blickt, verschieben sich im Hintergrund längst die globalen Machtverhältnisse.

Die wirtschaftliche Rivalität zwischen den USA und China ist zu einem zentralen Faktor der internationalen Ordnung geworden. Es geht um Marktzugänge, Technologiestandards – und um politischen Einfluss, nicht zuletzt im Globalen Süden.

Wie verändert Chinas Aufstieg das globale Gefüge – und welche Narrative bedient die Volksrepublik dabei? Darüber habe ich mit dem Soziologen und China-Experten Ho-Fung Hung gesprochen. Ho-fung Hung arbeitet und forscht aktuell an der John Hopkins Universität in Baltimore, USA und beschäftigt sich dort mit der politischen Ökonomie Chinas. Mit ihm habe ich über den Aufstieg Chinas im globalen System, dessen Einfluss im Globalen Süden sowie die Rolle der EU gesprochen. Aber hört selbst!

🎧 O-Ton Anfang: Ho-fung Hung (ca. 6m)

00:00:41 KL
 So in recent decades, China has emerged as a central player in the global economy. In your view, how has this rise reshaped the international economic order, and in what form and to what extent is it challenging Western dominance?
 
 00:00:57 Hung
 Yeah, actually the one of the most significant thing that happened in the last 30-40 years is the rise of China. The rise of China had two stages. From the 1980s, 1990s China basically tuck itself into the US led global free trade order to get a lot of U.S. investment or the investment from US allies and and learn from their technology and their way of doing business and things like that. So China is a kind of a subsidiary powers, economic powers. And then US reward China cooperation in all kind of international issues, geopolitical issues by opening its market wide for China product. At low tariff access to the US and then helping China get into WTO in 2001. And after that China become more and more independent economically. Its corporation, state owned and private, after they learned the technology and methods of US corporation or US dominant corporation from other parts of the world that they became competitive. And then US corporation started to campaign about technological FEV, IP FEV and all these kind of issues. And then trying to become the very competitive not only in Chinese market like US corporation and other countries. Western, traditional western corporation started to see their market share threatened by Chinese competition in the China market. And then China's corporation started to go out to the other developing world of the Belt & Road country, Latin America, Africa, Asia definitely. And then also compete many US and traditional Western corporation there. So that we are in the age of this kind of inter capitalist competition in which traditional Western corporation can no longer dominate in many sectors around the world. Not only in the developing world. But Chinese companies becoming very competitive and and led to kind of the increasing conflict between the US and China and that is primarily driven by the competition between US corporations and Chinese corporations in the in the rest of the world.
 00:03:31 KL
 So China positions itself as a leader of the Global South and a champion of "win-win cooperation". To what extent is this narrative reflected in its actual trade and investment practices, particularly in Africa, Latin America or Southeast Asia?
 
 00:03:50 Hung
 Yeah, definitely China is buying, you know, this Global North versus Global South narrative and champion itself as a kind of the leader or representative of the Global South interest. But on the one hand, it has some positive effect for China because back in the 50s, sixties and 70s, China really helped a lot of countries in, in, in in Africa and Southeast Asia and aligned with many developing other developing countries. First in competition with the US, but also actually more importantly with the Soviet Union at that time. A lot of Chinese aides and assistants are in that nature. And China by reinvoking its role as a leader of the global South of actually appeal to many people who still remember those bygone age. But those bygone age are bygone age. China is primarily a dominant capitalist power in its own right and it definitely the Chinese government economic foreign economic policy with other developing countries is many time driven by profit and interest. For example, trying to lend a lot of money to developing country through the Belt and Road initiative and many other initiative. And in many of this loan definitely doesn't don't like it's not. It's different from traditional IMF World Bank loan that. They don't dictate what policy their borrower need to adopt as a condition of the loan. But at the same time, many of this loan had other kind of condition that is that if you borrow Chinese money that you need to use Chinese products and hire Chinese contractors, which many times also bring the Chinese workers to undergo this projects financed by the loan. So in the end, this kind of loan is kind of bailed out for Chinese company who are facing a saturated market back home and need to find new market outlet. So this kind of a Chinese New ray of Chinese helping other developing countries is more driven by self-interest or the interest of the Chinese corporation. So China is becoming a kind of a capitalist powers just like European and American capitalist powers. So in this sense this Global South narrative, it's not quite updated. I would say it's some kind some somewhat obsolete. You cannot assume Chinese interests automatically naturally aligned with the interests of Madagascar or Cambodia or other kind of developing countries. So there's also conflict between the the bigger developing countries and China. They're concerned about employment, the opportunities for local corporation when Chinese company and Chinese products go into their market. So it is a more complicated world than a kind of Global North versus Global South narrative can capture.
 
 

00:10:46 KL
 So with growing tensions between China and the US, how should the EU position itself?
 
 00:10:53 Hung
 Yeah, EU has a very important and unique role in this because as I said, right now the US-China competition rivalry and deterioration of economic and also geopolitical relation is very much like UK and Germany rivalry at the turn of the 20th century. In the in the Bismarck era, in the in the late 19th century, Germany and UK were allies or amicable. But then in the early 20th century, Germany became ambitious. It's banks, it's cooperation start to compete with UK banks and UK cooperation in many other regions in the world. In the Middle East, in Latin America, in Asia. And then it escalated into geopolitical competition when the German state want to build a level power and competing with the UK level power. And then and then it unfortunately at that time it led to World War and in fact two world wars. And then now that we are not at that stage yet, China competition, economic and geopolitical, geopolitical competition with the US is not yet led to overt war, though the risk is always there. So there's the possibility that we can collectively as a global community to try to rechannel the competition between the US and China into less lethal form of competition or even more healthy form of competition for their competition in over influence in for example, in international organization. Right now that what we see as the, as the most troubling sign of our time is this kind of a declining multilateral organizations as a forum to resolve conflicts and then to, to express interests of different powers and negotiate. And then it, it, it, it risks getting us into a kind of the situation of the jungles in which the, the countries just deal with each other in their own means without any rule behind it. So there's a urgent task for us to revive many multilateral organization as a forum to resolve conflicts and, and, and for great powers and small powers to negotiate and settle the dispute and disagreement. So in that sense, and I think Europe has a particular role to play. If Europe put act together and then help revive and consolidate this kind of the multilateral institutions to encourage both the US and China to resolve their conflicts and difference through this rule based multilateral organization. So it will be good that that I, we should not be too naive to think that the US and China rivalry can, can disappear. At least not shortly. So they, they are poised to continue and even escalate and it is inevitable. And then what we can do best is to avoid, try to prevent this escalation of rivalry into military conflict, which is steady. And then to channel this rivalry and difference in conflict into more peaceful means of resolution that for rule based multilateral organization. And in that regard that I think Europe can play any significant role in that.

🎧 O-Ton Ende: Ho-fung Hung (ca. 8m)

Klemens: Der Workshop hat vieles aufgezeigt gezeigt, allen voran, dass die Diskussion um eine neue internationale Wirtschaftsordnung aktueller denn je ist. Alte Konzepte wie die NIEO bieten wichtige Anknüpfungspunkte, aber sie müssen mit heutigen Realitäten und Perspektiven zusammengedacht werden. Die globale Ordnung ist im Umbruch – und mit ihr auch die Frage, wer in Zukunft mitredet, wenn es um Regeln für Handel, Geld und Entwicklung geht. Bei diesem Workshop wurde also die Basis dafür geschaffen, einen progressiven Rahmen für die Debatte um faire und nachhaltige Wirtschaft zu kreieren. 

Und damit sind wir auch schon wieder am Ende unserer Sendung angelangt. Das nächste C3-Radio gibt es dann am 4. August. Bis dahin: Danke fürs Zuhören, bleibt interessiert – und solidarisch. Wir hören uns!