The World Trade Report 2015 examines why the Trade Facilitation Agreement is so important, what its economic impact is projected to be, and how the WTO is taking a number of important – and novel – steps to help countries to maximize its benefits.

Over the past 20 years, global trade in goods has nearly quadrupled, reaching US$ 19 trillion in 2013 compared with US$ 5 trillion in 1996. This represents an annual growth rate of 7.6 per cent on average. Over the same period, there has been a 15 per cent reduction in average tariffs applied by...

The world is changing with extraordinary rapidity, driven by many influences, including shifts in production and consumption patterns, continuing technological innovation, new ways of doing business and, of course, policy. The World Trade Report 2013 focuses on how trade is both a cause and an...

The Uruguay Round, one of the longest and most complex economic negotiations ever undertaken, was completed successfully in December 1993. Its results are embodied in nearly 30 legal agreements and a large number of supplementary decisions, as well as a large number of highly detailed separate...

On 1 January 2008 the multilateral trading system will celebrate its sixtieth anniversary. The World Trade Report 2007 marks the occasion with a retrospective look at what we have learned from those six decades of international trade cooperation. In asking what we have learned, the report...

The Panel on Defining the Future of Trade was established in 2012 to examine and analyse challenges to global trade opening in the 21st century. The Report looks at trade patterns and what it means to open global trade in the 21st century, bearing in mind the role of trade in contributing to...

Trade has always been shaped by technology but the rapid development of digital technologies in recent times has the potential to transform international trade profoundly in the years to come. The World Trade Report 2018 examines how digital technologies – and in particular the Internet of...

Since the WTO was established in 1995, 33 economies have joined the organization. This has resulted in over 20,000 pages of legal documents defining their specific terms of membership. These accessions have brought the WTO’s total membership to 161 economies, comprising more than 7 billion...

The annual World Trade Report focuses on trade policy issues - the core topic addressed in 2006 is subsidies. The Report also takes a look at recent trade developments and examines a range of trade topics, including trade in textiles and clothing, flows of international receipts and payments of...