Digital trade facilitation refers to the application of modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) to simplify and automate international trade procedures. It is rapidly becoming essential to maintaining trade competitiveness and enabling effective participation in cross-border...

Digital trade is upending the way consumers and companies do business. Digital trade and e-commerce have become major drivers of economic development by enhancing productivity and lowering costs of trade in goods. But government policies have been slow to catch up with the increasing importance...

As World Trade Organization (WTO) membership becomes almost universal, the Pacific island countries stand out as the largest group of outsiders. As the islands seek to replace reliance on preferential trading arrangements by competitive exports, market access and trade facilitation have become...

Much has been made of the “spaghetti or noodle bowl” problem of overlapping preferential trade agreements (PTAs). A new PTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently under negotiation between eleven states — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru,...

This paper considers the implications of the shift of trade rule-making and liberalization from the World Trade Organization (WTO) to the mega-regional mode for the development of responses to climate change. We review developments at the interface between the trade system and climate change...

This paper analyses the new discipline on state-owned enterprises contained in the recently concluded Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, and evaluates various factors that influenced the shaping of its specific rules. The new discipline consolidates and strengthens related provisions in...

Progress in the Doha Round of WTO negotiations has been slow. Frameworks for establishing modalities for agriculture, non-agricultural market access and trade facilitation were agreed upon in July 2004 but key details are still to be negotiated and many commitments remain vague. For developing...

The advent of the coronavirus in early 2020 led to the severe shutdown of economic activities across the globe. The virus led to a pandemic affecting the physical facilitation of cross border merchandise trade. International trade is augmented with trade documentation and physical verification....