These Guidelines help developing countries enhance their capacity to trade and participate more effectively in the international rule-making and institutional mechanisms that shape the global trading system. They also provide a common reference point for the trade, aid and finance comunities.

Developing countries want to join in the globalisation process. However, the increasing complexity of global markets, the new challenges of the multilateral trading system and the competing demands of regional, bilateral and multilateral trade agreemen

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has a role to play in strengthening the global trading system for development, primarily by lowering barriers to trade in goods and services and ensuring that trade rules are useful to Developing countries. But greater international cooperation must complement WTO-based negotiations, in particular, concerted action outside the WTO to enhance the trade capacity of poor countries ("aid for trade").

This book looks at what the trade and development community needs to know about aid-for-trade results, what past evaluations of programmes and projects reveal about trade outcomes and impacts, and how the trade and development community could improve the performance of aid for trade interventions.

Trade capacity building (TCB) is a form of development assistance provided by the United States and other countries to help developing countries participate in and benefit from global trade. Congress and the executive branch have identified TCB assistance as an important tool for U.S. trade and development policy based on evidence of the effectiveness of trade in reducing poverty and generating economic development and growth. From 2005 to 2010, 24 U.S. agencies provided more than $9 billion in trade capacity building assistance to help more than 100 countries reduce poverty, increase economic growth, and achieve stability through trade. This book discusses the extent to which U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) 2003 strategy guides USAID's TCB activities; and describes methods USAID uses to coordinate TCB efforts with other U.S. government agencies at home and abroad.

This edition analyses how trade can contribute to economic diversification and empowerment, with a focus on eliminating extreme poverty, particularly through the effective participation of women and youth. It shows how aid for trade can contribute to that objective by addressing supply-side capacity and trade-related infrastructure constraints, including for micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises notably in rural areas.