Globally, special economic zones (SEZs) are created to boost exports and promote investment by providing units located inside the zones with certain fiscal and non-fiscal incentives that are not available to and/or are different from those given to units in the domestic tariff area (DTA). In...

Nachdem die Verhandlungen zu einem institutionellen Rahmenabkommen zwischen der Schweiz und der EU wegen politisch-institutionellen Uneinigkeiten abgebrochen wurden, stellt sich die Frage, ob die bilateralen Beziehungen angesichts der gemeinsamen Interessen nicht primär im wirtschaftlichen...

This article describes the evolution of the regulation of agricultural trade and analyses key aspects of the negotiations of the Uruguay and Doha Rounds, in which the least developed countries managed to make the final outcome of the negotiations conditional on progress in the liberalisation of...

For many years now, lack of progress in multilateral trade negotiations has been a major cause of concern among WTO members. With diversity in the economic situation of members and differences in their stages of development, delay in concluding trade agreements is inevitable. However, the...

The WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) has been predicted to bring about an expansion in trade flows and real income gains. To date, there is still very limited empirical evidence on the actual post-implementation impact of the TFA. This paper provides an assessment, combining econometric...

This paper studies the nonmarket environment and possible nonmarket strategies of Airbus, with a focus on the WTO disputes between the European Union and the United States regarding their subsidies for Airbus and Boeing. The paper studies the institutions involved in transatlantic trade...

The expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) in 2015 was the most successful attempt at trade liberalization under the auspices of the WTO since its inception in 1995. Its success makes it a template for other trade liberalization efforts. In this article, I explain how the ITA...

One of the principal achievements of the GATT Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations (1986-1994), which resulted in the establishment of the World Trade Organization ("WTO"), was the creation of a ground-breaking system for the resolution of trade disputes between WTO Members. This...

Africa represents a small share of global production and trade, while hosting half of the extreme poor worldwide. To catch up with the rest of the world, there is no alternative: the continent needs to link its production and trade to the global economy to take advantage of unlimited demand and...

This chapter examines the crisis of the WTO dispute settlement system (DSS) in connection with the blocking of the appointment of new Appellate Body (AB) members by the United States (US). In this context, it investigates the reasons behind this decision and evaluates the reactions of the other...

More than two decades ago, the literature on the Chinese intellectual property system was filled with commentaries on the trade threats exchanged between the United States and China in relation to the inadequate protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in the latter. At that...

We study the endogenous formation of climate coalitions linked to a preferential free trade arrangement. In a multi-stage strategic trade and participation game, coalition and fringe countries dispose of a discriminatory tariff on dirty imports as well as emission permits imposed on domestic...

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....

Under Articles 31 and 31bis of the TRIPS Agreement, WTO members may validly sanction the use of a patented invention without the patent owner's authorization by issuing a compulsory license (CL). In the pharmaceuticals space, governments have historically employed compulsory licenses to compel...

The 12th WTO Ministerial Conference adopted a Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement on 17 June 2022. This partially concluded almost two years of protracted discussions in response to a proposal by India and South Africa for a waiver from certain obligations under the TRIPS Agreement for...

The cusp of the twentieth anniversary of the WTO Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (hereafter "the Declaration") was marked by a global pandemic. The Declaration and its iteration in the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (hereafter...

This paper unpacks the role of the domestic content of imports as a novel source of policy interdependence along the global supply chain. We show how a rise in local contents embodied in imports can skew national trade policy preferences, and pull upstream and downstream countries in asymmetric...

International climate targets have far-reaching implications for all areas of the economy and life, including trade policy. To reach the target of the Paris Agreement, it may be necessary to link trade and environmental policy, whereby one way of linking the two policy areas is to include...

This report looks at progress over the past decade in supporting the integration of least-developed countries (LDCs) into the multilateral trading system. Prepared as the WTO's contribution to the 5th United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5), the report highlights that...

In 2021, the United Nations Committee on Development Policy adopted a resolution that Bangladesh would graduate from least developed country (LDC) status after a period of 5 years. This means that in 2026 Bangladesh would have to forego its exemption to intellectual property (IP) provisions of...

This article analyses Turkey's safeguard (SG) actions using a renovated approach to the measurement of the impacts of the SG duties with empirical application introduced by Bown and McCulloch (2004). We examine the trade impacts of 16 safeguard duties, covering 52 different 4 and 6-digit...