The question of the state and the evolution of protectionism often gets a simplified answer: The main view is that the GATT Rounds have been achieving a continuous reduction. This view is partly revised based on four propositions: (1) Protectionism is an integral part of the international...

A neglected aspect of regional trade agreements (RTAs) is their protectionist potential. In times of a stagnating World Trade Organization (WTO), growing economic nationalism and skepticism about the merits of free trade and trade agreements, the paper examines to what extent recently signed...

The Received Theory of trade policy, based solely on terms-of-trade externalities between national governments, has become the conventional wisdom among international trade theorists. But it displays two puzzles that render that theory inconsistent with reality. Significant empirical work,...

Populism is telling voters what they want to hear, knowing that it is neither true, nor feasible. Lately, trade and economic integration has seen the spread of untrue and unfeasible tenets, which have proved to be highly popular and have received a warm welcome. Fueled by imperial fantasies and...

Over the last three years, trade tensions between the United States (US) and China have transformed a fairly open bilateral trading environment into a rather protectionist one. The new administration of the United States has maintained most of the bilateral tariffs and non-tariff barriers put in...

Over the years, the substantive content of international investment agreements (IIAs) has shifted to reflect political change and to respond to lessons learnt in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). With a focus on eight IIAs, selected with a view to geographical representativeness, this...

Why is further multilateral trade liberalisation proving so difficult to achieve? This paper shows that Article XXIV itself, the set of WTO rules governing trade block formation, undermines the multilateral liberalisation process. Trade block formation under Article XXIV can be thought of as a...