Green Industrial Policy Round Table 3: Industrial Policies and the Global Trade Framework

The resurgence of industrial policy is unfolding against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical competition, urgent climate imperatives, and persistent development divides. The role of government is growing significantly, and many sectors witness interventions that aim to reshape what the markets of the future will look like.  Yet this surge of multiple new national programs targeting many sectors poses challenges for multilateralism, especially with regard to global trade rules. In the environment of growing risk of fragmentation and policy incoherence, the role of global institutions is becoming increasingly fragile, but also more important.

Round tables 1 and 2 (convened by IISD in May 2025) brought together government officials, researchers, and policy experts to openly examine the landscape of green industrial policies, their impacts (including distributional effects), and the implications for developing countries and LDCs. Critical insights that emerged from the sessions include:

1. Industrial policies have largely reshaped several sectors that are crucial for the digital and energy transition, and more of such measures can be expected in the future;
2. Subsidies are far from the only instrument available in the industrial policy toolkit. To better understand the full scope of government interventions, policymakers need to be more mindful about the interaction of different measures when shaping the future of each sector;  
3. Despite the efforts of several organizations, measuring the effectiveness and examining the impact of industrial policies remains difficult. This is especially true when talking about the cross-border effects of such policies;  
4. Developing countries have different capacities to design and implement industrial policies. While some countries have been successfully using such measures to build and future-proof their economies, others could find themselves vulnerable to the impact of measures of their trading partners.
5. Recent disruptions in the trade policy space have tested the relevance of existing global trade rules and added pressure to discussion about reform of the multilateral trading system.

Organized on the margins of the WTO Public Forum 2025, the third IISD Roundtable on Green Industrial Policies advanced the conversation by focusing on the international dimensions of industrial policy, with a special emphasis WTO-related issues. The event convened representatives from key governments, academia, think tanks, and development actors.

With the WTO’s Fourteenth Ministerial Conference (MC14) on the near horizon, this roundtable aimed to serve as an opportunity to shape the conversation on industrial policy issues in the lead up to the meeting and help generate forward-looking, practical inputs that can build bridges between trade rules, climate goals, and development imperatives.  

Insights from these discussions will help shape the direction of IISD’s Green Industrial Policies workstream and guide future research.

These round tables are part of a 4-year project led by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and funded by Open Society Foundations.

Green Industrial Policy Roundtable Series

• Round Table 1 | Setting the Stage
• Round Table 2 | Deep Dives into Sectoral Industrial Policies and Development
• Round Table 3 | Industrial Policies and the Global Trade Framework