International Investment

Economic ties between Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have reached a turning point. In a mere decade, Asia has become LAC's second-largest trading partner. This dynamic trade relationship has boosted LAC's strategic and economic importance to Asia.To expand these gains, governments must play a more decisive role. Their participation is critical in strengthening and balancing the three key pillars of any successful integration initiative: trade, investment, and cooperation. In its four chapters, the report identifies the challenges and opportunities in each of these pillars while drawing attention to the benefits of balancing their development.

In the coming years, prosperity in Germany will have to be generated through technology and knowledge to an increasing degree. Technological progress will become the sole driver of growth in the long run as growth contributed by labour and capital declines in the face of demographic change.
Germany must now chart the course for this transformation.

Radical technological change will slash marginal costs, opening up completely new business models. This will change value added in key sectors including mobility, healthcare and energy, and increase integration with services.

Germany must take more concerted action than it has so far to set the course for industrial policy going forward. Although Germany still boasts a range of outstanding benefits as a business location, it must tackle weak points in the start-up environment, venture capital, public investment and regulatory parameters for key technologies.

The strategic priorities of German industrial policy must continue to be the deepening of the European single market and the international trade and investment regime. Bilateral and multilateral trade policy has moved into rougher waters while the untapped potential right here in the European Union
is wholly underestimated.

In the digital world too, a good balance must be found between productivity and social cohesion. While this vision is still forming on the horizon, the political course taken now will determine whether it will turn into a positive or a plaintive reality.