Properly crafted laws to govern international trade will allow states to pursue sustainable development, while offering the predictability and fairness that allow for large and equitable gains from trade and investment flows.
Brave New Deal? Assessing the May 10th U.S. Bipartisan Compact on Free Trade Agreements
(PDF - 176 kb)
On May 10, 2007, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, powerful members of the newly-ascendant U.S. Democratic Party, announced that they had negotiated a compromise agreement with the Bush Administration and leading Congressional Republicans on critical changes to pending free trade agreements with Peru and Panama. Aaron Cosbey assesses the compromise.
Modern trade law governs much more than just tariff levels of goods as they move across borders. For one thing, it goes more broadly to cover trade in services as well. For another, it governs a host of practices that occur "behind the border," dictating how countries should propound and implement standards covering goods (including environmental and health-related standards); what sort of legal regime they should have to protect intellectual property rights; what forms of subsidies they may enact; how they should treat foreign investors; how governments should procure goods and services, and so on.
As such, trade law—embodied in the World Trade Organization and the myriad bilateral and regional agreements on trade and investment—has an enormous influence on the ability of governments to harness globalization in the pursuit of national interests. IISD's work in this area focuses on ensuring that the rules and the regimes that produce them are formulated so as to ensure the greatest possible contribution to sustainable development.
World Trade Organization
Our work on the WTO as an institution, and the negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda.
Regional/Bilateral Agreements
Regional and bilateral trade agreements are an expanding web. How do they affect the prospects for harnessing trade as a force for SD?
Environment and Trade: A Handbook - Second Edition
A seminal, plain-speaking guide to the issues. Produced with UNEP.