The proliferation of preferential trade agreements in recent years has reenergized a long-standing debate over their benefits and costs. This paper argues that a balanced view is in order. The trade creating effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) are likely to fall off sharply with increasing...

The WTO as we know it – version 1.0 – was created for an industrial economy with an overlay of a knowledge-based economy that is now being transformed into a data-driven economy. The content of WTO rules for this new digital economy promises to be very different what is in place now. Not...

This paper addresses the question: what is the substantive case for the Doha Round, in terms of commercial benefits to the negotiating parties and in terms of more general improvements to the system of international governance that are to be discussed? The paper notes that the starting point for...

Following the third major collapse of talks in the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations on July 28, 2008, in Geneva, it was clear to many observers of the multilateral trade scene that it was time for reflection – on the Round, on other mechanisms to manage trade negotiations, on the...

Canada is at an historic juncture with regard to trade policy, deciding on ratification of the Canada-EU and Trans-Pacific Partnership agreements, having seen the multilateral option effectively removed at the WTO Ministerial at Nairobi in 2015, and facing constraints in making additional...

On March 2-3, 2006, a group of leading observers of the international trade and investment scene gathered in Ottawa for an informal discussion of the prospects for the Doha Development Agenda in view of the progress in negotiations made at the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade...

On February 17-18, 2005, the Centre for International Governance Innovation at the University of Waterloo and the International Development Research Centre, in co-ordination with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade convened an informal meeting of leading observers of the...

On March 13-14, 2003, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade convened an informal meeting of leading observers of international trade and investment to discuss prospects for the Doha Development Agenda. This paper represents a thematic summary of those discussions, which were...