World trade has experienced a significant slowdown since the 2008 financial crisis. Over this period, the global ratio of trade expansion to income growth has halved. An effective global trade and investment system is crucial for reinvigorating economic growth and confronting 21st century global challenges. Yet the system - well performing as it is in many of its functions - is out of date and in need of greater coherence. It is this reality that led the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), the World Economic Forum, and 16 partnering institutions to bring together more than 375 international experts in over 80 interactive dialogues between 2012 and 2015 under the E15 Initiative. At the core of the initiative are 15 thematic Expert Groups and three Task Forces, each comprised of leading thinkers from developed and developing countries drawn from different fields and backgrounds. Their work has been complemented by an overarching dialogue looking at the global trade and investment architecture, involving consultations with hundreds of thinkers and policy-makers. The entire process has yielded approximately 150 analytical papers and its deliberations have stimulated a fresh look at the long-term challenges and opportunities facing the global trade and investment system, especially in respect of its efficacy, inclusiveness and contribution to sustainable development.

Reinvigorating trade integration should be a key component of the global policy agenda to boost growth. Trade policy’s new frontiers such as services, regulatory cooperation, and trade and investment complementarities carry high potential to bolster efficiency and productivity. But with governments differing on whether to continue the WTO Doha Round, there is an urgent need to identify a path for the global trading system in today’s more complex trade policy landscape. A long interregnum without a path forward would risk fragmenting the global trade system and undermining its governance. Tackling trade policy issues important to the global economy may require flexible approaches to multilateral negotiations, including modalities such as plurilaterals. Enhanced coherence efforts are also needed to ensure that regional trade agreements and multilateralism coexist productively.

Introduction to Trade Policy provides a comprehensive overview of the rules and regulations that govern trade flow. It discusses the trade policy formulation process of major international economic players, and analyzes existing trade policy tools that countries may resort to in order to take advantage of the benefits of international trade and to protect themselves against its dangers, as well as their implications for trade policy, law and negotiations. In Section I, the book explores the ways in which interest groups interact with government and legislators to shape trade policies. By developing an analytical view of trade policy formulation systems in the U.S., European Union, the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), Canada, Mexico and Australia, the book will help the reader to gain a better understanding of these countries’ trade policy developments and also to apply such learning to the analysis of the trade policy formulation of any other countries. Section II goes on to explain how trade policy tools are used by governments to achieve trade and other policy objectives, while Section III analyses trade in services and the multilateral trade rules on Intellectual Property. Finally, Section IV uses hypothetical case studies in simulation exercises to illustrate trade policy decision-making and trade agreement negotiations in a bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral setting. This is the ideal introduction to international trade policy formulation for students and professionals in the areas of law, politics, economics and public policy who are seeking to develop a global view of international trade, gain insights into trade negotiations and understand the motivations behind the policies and actions of governments regarding international trade issues. This book is also the ideal companion to any traditional legal casebook on international trade or on international economic law.

This book explores the adaptating process of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to a constantly changing trade and policy context. The adoption of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), a multilateral agreement with stand-alone rules and principles for the governance of trade and investment in services, represented a watershedin the history of global trade governance. Over three decades after the drafting of the Agreement, WTO Members struggle to deliver on the GATS’ mandate to achieve progressively higher levels of trade liberalisation in a radically different trade and policy landscape. Against this background, this book examines the contribution of the WTO negotiating, adjudicative, and deliberative functions to adapting the GATS to changing circumstances. The book uncovers an extremely flexible and adaptable agreement whose full potential has yet to be realised due to a complex set of factors weighing more broadly on the use of the WTO functions. The book distils the factors at play that constrain WTO Members’ capacity to adapt the Agreement to changing circumstances and explores potential pathways to overcome them. The book will be of interest to scholars, policy makers, and trade diplomats interested in understanding the factors and processes conditioning the adaptation of a multilateral trade agreement to changing trade and policy circumstances.