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...

In 2019 and the early months of 2020, global trade faced two major albeit very different shocks, namely the United States-China trade war and the cascading response of the countries around the world to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the former situation involved a pair of centrally-placed trading...

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 chapter examines the barriers posed for smaller and poorer World Trade Organization (WTO) members to challenge trade barriers under the WTO's dispute settlement understanding. It first addresses the implications of the judicialization of the WTO's dispute settlement system. It next examines...

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...

The signing of the Uruguay Round Agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the ever-increasing products and people movements between countries will put governments under increasing pressure to maintain effective and scientifically justified quarantine and food safety policies to...

This paper examines the rationale for the rules on domestic subsidies in international trade agreements through a framework that emphasizes commitment. We build a model where the policy-maker has a tariff and a production subsidy at its disposal, taxation can be distortionary and the...

This paper examines the rationale for the rules on domestic subsidies in international trade agreements through a framework that emphasizes commitment. We build a model where the policy-maker has a tariffs and a production subsidy at its disposal, taxation can be distortionary and the...

A second approach focuses on the relationships existing between the variables themselves, using multi-criteria and graph analysis. Natural resources endowments, on the one hand, and services orientation, on the other one, are among the most determinant variables for defining Trade in Value Added...