While standard demand factors perform well in predicting historical trade patterns, they fail conspicuously in 2020, when pandemic-specific factors played a key role above and beyond demand. Prediction errors from a multilateral import demand model in 2020 vary systematically with the health...

This paper highlights the importance of multilateral cooperation as an avenue for tackling technical barriers to trade (TBTs). These non-tariff barriers are some of the most prevalent affecting global trade. While the US-China trade war and its tariff escalation was grabbing headlines,...

Rules-based trade is under attack and the WTO is at risk of marginalization. The COVID-19 pan-demic and its detrimental effects on public health, global supply- and value chains and industrial production, have brought back national export restrictions and stopped the free flow of goods and...

Within a few short weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has accomplished what multiple wars (hot and cold) failed to achieve over the past 75 years: massive simultaneous disruptions of international and local supply chains.Policymakers operating at the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs understandably...

This paper presents new high frequency data on trade policy changes targeting medical and food products since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, documenting how countries used trade policy instruments in response to the health crisis on a week-by-week basis. The dataset reveals a rapid...

This paper analyzes a prominent dimension of the initial policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic observed in many countries: the imposition of export restrictions and actions to facilitate imports. Using weekly data on the use of trade policy instruments during the first seven months of the...

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...

The objective of this paper is to assess the claim that the WTO dispute settlement system should improve the transparency of its proceedings to people by opening panel and Appellate Body meetings as well as accepting and reflecting unsolicited amicus curiae briefs. This paper argues that the...

This study quantifies the trade and economic impacts of the tariff measures taken to date in the main salvoes of the trade wars unleashed by unilateral US tariff measures imposed on steel and aluminum pursuant to the Department of Commerce Section 232 National Security Investigation, on imports...

Trade protectionism has been on the rise and spreading all over the world. Using quarterly data on antidumping cases from 1997Q1 to 2020Q4, this paper examines the bilateral relationship between China and its major trading partners in imposing antidumping. First, a bivariate vector...