The deliberations at the Bali Ministerial Round seem to have broken the stalemate surrounding the food security provisions under the World Trade Organization (WTO) which in turn resulted in a tremendous impact on the ambitious Agreement on Trade Facilitation under the auspices of the...

The conclusion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) constitutes a priority and key component of the new external trade policy of the European Union (EU) and an immediate follow-up to several years of regulatory cooperation between the two global trade powers. In an era of...

The testimony argues that the United States has recently disengaged from formal economic cooperation with the Asia-Pacific region, an important historical partner and the world’s fastest-growing economy. Meanwhile, the region has moved ahead with its own agreements, the Comprehensive and...

From 1990 to 2010, free trade helped a billion people lift themselves out of extreme poverty. But the pace of liberalisation has since slowed and protectionism is back in fashion. Fortunately, Brexit provides a golden opportunity for the UK to become a global champion of free trade again. This...

Trade liberalization has proceeded on the assumption that eventual aggregate welfare gains will exceed the losses. While compensatory mechanisms exist in most countries, they tend to be underfunded and ineffective. To begin to address this problem, the direct beneficiaries from trade...

This is one of 10 studies for the Copenhagen Consensus Project that sought to evaluate the most feasible opportunities to improve welfare globally and alleviate poverty in developing countries. Anderson argues that phasing out distortionary government subsidies and barriers to international...

RCEP ist relevant für Europa, wird in mancher Hinsicht aber überschätzt. Im Vergleich zu EU-Abkommen bleibt die Handelsliberalisierung weit zurück. Denn rund fünf Sechstel des intrare-gionalen Handels fanden nach Berechnungen des Economist bislang zwischen Partnern von bilateralen...

This paper shows that the WTO's Article XXIV increases the likelihood of free trade, but may worsen world welfare when free trade is not reached and customs unions (CUs) form. We consider a model of many countries. Article XXIV prevents a CU from raising its common external tariff, which makes...

The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), as amended by the Protocol of Amendment signed December 10, 2019, represents a major overhaul of the now-dated 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). However, it is unusual in that it has little traditional tariff liberalization,...

Brazil is currently immersed in the project of building a new common market, known as MERCOSUR, with its neighbors Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. It has largely been assumed that this project will produce economic growth and therefore be beneficial for the environment. However, this assumption...