Last Updated: August 2, 2023
Open, stable, and transparent trade policies are key for economic growth and resilience and for addressing key global challenges, including climate change, food security, and underdevelopment. The Fund’s longstanding role in international trade and trade policy is rooted in our mandate, which we deliver to countries through analysis and policy advice. These activities are complemented by trade work related to lending and capacity development.
The 2023 Review of the Role of Trade in the Work of the Fund outlines an agenda to reinvigorate the role of the Fund to help countries address key trade-related challenges. The IMF’s priorities for future work include analytical issues, surveillance, and cooperation with other international organizations, especially the World Trade Organization (WTO).
F&D’s June issue is all about trade in turmoil. Learn how global trade is being dramatically reshaped by geopolitical fragmentation, technology, and changing policy priorities like equality and climate change.
The Rise of Discriminatory Regionalism, by Michele Ruta
Subsidy Wars, by Elizabeth Van Heuvelen
The heads of the IMF, OECD, World Bank, and WTO today announced the launch of a Joint Subsidy Platform (JSP) at www.subsidydata.org to enhance transparency on the use of subsidies. The JSP is intended to facilitate access to information on the nature, size, and economic impact of subsidies, with a view to facilitating dialogue on their appropriate use and design.
🎦 Watch July 26 joint webinar on Subsidies: Why do we care, what do we know, and what next?
April 3, 2023
This paper outlines key changes in the global trade landscape in recent years, reviews the role of the Fund in this area, and outlines a trade strategy for the Fund going forward.
Digitalization has the potential to bring great economic benefits, but it is also creating new challenges. This note focuses on trade in digitized products, its fiscal revenue implications, and the appropriate role for domestic and border tax instruments in this context.
This paper outlines key changes in the global trade landscape in recent years, reviews the role of the Fund in this area, and outlines a trade strategy for the Fund going forward.
In this study, four international organizations (IOs) examine ways to help, individually and jointly, to develop methodologies to assess the cross-border effects of different forms of subsidies, and supporting inter-governmental dialogues.
Trade integration can play a much larger role in boosting shared prosperity. The current focus on trade tensions threatens to obscure the great untapped benefits possible from further trade reform.
The role of trade in the global economy is at a critical juncture. Increased trade integration helped to drive economic growth in advanced and developing economies in the latter part of the 20th century.
This Reference Note introduces guidance on preferential trade agreements (PTAs). In so doing, it responds to the request by the Executive Board in the context of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) Evaluation of IMF Involvement in Trade Policy Issues.
In this paper we seek to answer the question of how the patterns of bilateral trade are altered by rising trade policy uncertainty (TPU).
In recent years, African leaders have shown a renewed push for regional integration by signing the agreement on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The AfCFTA has the potential to transform regional trade and thereby lift growth and support livelihoods across the continent.
Supply-chain disruptions and rising geopolitical tensions have brought the risks and potential benefits and costs of geoeconomic fragmentation to the center of the policy debate.
After several decades of increasing global economic integration, the world is facing the risk of policy-driven geoeconomic fragmentation (GEF).
Trade has been an engine of growth for Asia and the world. The rise of geopolitical tensions in recent years—first amid US-China trade tensions and now accelerating in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—has brought concerns.
When COVID-19 hit, the combined supply and demand shock was expected to lead to a dramatic collapse in trade. However, trade in goods bounced back quite rapidly, although trade in services still remains sluggish.
Digitalization has the potential to bring great economic benefits, but it is also creating new challenges. This note focuses on trade in digitized products, its fiscal revenue implications, and the appropriate role for domestic and border tax instruments in this context.
This paper outlines key changes in the global trade landscape in recent years, reviews the role of the Fund in this area, and outlines a trade strategy for the Fund going forward.
In this study, four international organizations (IOs) examine ways to help, individually and jointly, to develop methodologies to assess the cross-border effects of different forms of subsidies, and supporting inter-governmental dialogues.
Trade integration can play a much larger role in boosting shared prosperity. The current focus on trade tensions threatens to obscure the great untapped benefits possible from further trade reform.
The role of trade in the global economy is at a critical juncture. Increased trade integration helped to drive economic growth in advanced and developing economies in the latter part of the 20th century.
This Reference Note introduces guidance on preferential trade agreements (PTAs). In so doing, it responds to the request by the Executive Board in the context of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) Evaluation of IMF Involvement in Trade Policy Issues.
In this paper we seek to answer the question of how the patterns of bilateral trade are altered by rising trade policy uncertainty (TPU).
In recent years, African leaders have shown a renewed push for regional integration by signing the agreement on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The AfCFTA has the potential to transform regional trade and thereby lift growth and support livelihoods across the continent.
Supply-chain disruptions and rising geopolitical tensions have brought the risks and potential benefits and costs of geoeconomic fragmentation to the center of the policy debate.
After several decades of increasing global economic integration, the world is facing the risk of policy-driven geoeconomic fragmentation (GEF).
Trade has been an engine of growth for Asia and the world. The rise of geopolitical tensions in recent years—first amid US-China trade tensions and now accelerating in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—has brought concerns.
When COVID-19 hit, the combined supply and demand shock was expected to lead to a dramatic collapse in trade. However, trade in goods bounced back quite rapidly, although trade in services still remains sluggish.
Washington, DC, October 24-25, 2023
More details to follow soon.
Joint webinar hosted by the OECD on July 26, following the release of the new Joint Subsidies Platform by the IMF, World Bank Group, WTO, and OECD. Video: Courtesy of the OECD.
With the world facing the risk of policy-driven geoeconomic fragmentation, this one-day conference brings together leading scholars and policymakers to discuss the potential economic consequences of geoeconomic fragmentation, focusing on its effects on trade and capital flows, firms’ production networks, and technology diffusion.
Workshop | Opening Remarks by Gita Gopinath
Launch event in Nairobi, Kenya, for new IMF paper which highlights the potential benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Area for the continent, and the policies and reforms needed to achieve them.
A workshop at the 2023 Spring Meetings. The PortWatch project uses satellite-based vessel data and big data analytics to monitor trade disruptions from natural disasters. It allows users to monitor local and global spillovers from natural disasters by leveraging insights on the international trade network.
Watch replay here.
Joint IMF-World Bank-WTO-OECD Panel Discussion hosted by the World Bank Group during the 2022 IMF-WBG Spring Meetings.
Watch replay here: https://youtu.be/2673uI2YxOo (Video: Courtesy of the World Bank Group)
The high-level panel discusses the role of trade in supporting global growth, and how governments can protect those that are left behind.
Washington, DC, October 24-25, 2023
More details to follow soon.
Joint webinar hosted by the OECD on July 26, following the release of the new Joint Subsidies Platform by the IMF, World Bank Group, WTO, and OECD. Video: Courtesy of the OECD.
With the world facing the risk of policy-driven geoeconomic fragmentation, this one-day conference brings together leading scholars and policymakers to discuss the potential economic consequences of geoeconomic fragmentation, focusing on its effects on trade and capital flows, firms’ production networks, and technology diffusion.
Workshop | Opening Remarks by Gita Gopinath
Launch event in Nairobi, Kenya, for new IMF paper which highlights the potential benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Area for the continent, and the policies and reforms needed to achieve them.
A workshop at the 2023 Spring Meetings. The PortWatch project uses satellite-based vessel data and big data analytics to monitor trade disruptions from natural disasters. It allows users to monitor local and global spillovers from natural disasters by leveraging insights on the international trade network.
Watch replay here.
Joint IMF-World Bank-WTO-OECD Panel Discussion hosted by the World Bank Group during the 2022 IMF-WBG Spring Meetings.
Watch replay here: https://youtu.be/2673uI2YxOo (Video: Courtesy of the World Bank Group)
The high-level panel discusses the role of trade in supporting global growth, and how governments can protect those that are left behind.
Growing trade restrictions may reverse economic integration and undermine the cooperation needed to protect against new shocks and address global challenges
The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States unleashed its largest investment in climate and energy ever. But it also left many countries questioning some of its protectionist provisions, accusing the US of bending, if not breaking international trade rules under the WTO. So how do we move forward on climate without going backward on trade? Noah Kaufman says international trade rules need to be redesigned if protectionism is not to become an unintended consequence of green industrial policy. Kaufman is a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy and served in the Biden Administration’s Council of Economic Advisors. Transcript
Read the article in the IMF's Finance and Development
Despite geopolitical tensions, meaningful cooperation on trade remains possible
As rising geopolitical tensions chip away at globalization, will a more fragmented world mean stronger regional pacts? Economist Michele Ruta says regionalism in a time of conflict is unlikely to triumph, but rather is likely to change. The trend toward strengthening ties with friends and loosening them with non-friends is making regional trade less about integration and more about discrimination. Transcript
Read the article in the IMF's Finance & Development Magazine
Trade openness increased after the Second World War, but has slowed following the global financial crisis
From Brexit and US-China trade tensions to the pandemic and war, successive shocks have combined to keep uncertainty elevated
The Subsidy Platform is a joint effort by the staff of the IMF, OECD, World Bank Group, and WTO. Its purpose is to increase transparency on the use of subsidies across economies and sectors and to serve as a “one-stop shop” for information and analysis on subsidies respectively maintained by these organizations. Each organization uses its own definition, methodology, and coverage for the information it maintains. Thus, users of the portal should take note of those differences when using data and information from each organization.
The Subsidy Platform serves as a portal and redirects users to data and information that is separately hosted on the four institutions’ websites. Users should abide by the disclaimers, copyright and usage procedures, and citation information on the individual institutions’ sites, platforms, and databases. The joint hosting of the Subsidy Platform does not constitute an endorsement by the members of any of the four organizations of particular information accessible through this site.
IMF | OECD | The World Bank | World Trade Organization
<PortWatch — COMING in Late 2023>
The PortWatch project uses satellite-based vessel data and big data analytics to monitor trade disruptions from natural disasters. The PortWatch portal allows users to monitor local and global spillovers from natural disasters by leveraging insights on the international trade network.
Watch the full video of the April 11 Workshop here.
The Subsidy Platform is a joint effort by the staff of the IMF, OECD, World Bank Group, and WTO. Its purpose is to increase transparency on the use of subsidies across economies and sectors and to serve as a “one-stop shop” for information and analysis on subsidies respectively maintained by these organizations. Each organization uses its own definition, methodology, and coverage for the information it maintains. Thus, users of the portal should take note of those differences when using data and information from each organization.
The Subsidy Platform serves as a portal and redirects users to data and information that is separately hosted on the four institutions’ websites. Users should abide by the disclaimers, copyright and usage procedures, and citation information on the individual institutions’ sites, platforms, and databases. The joint hosting of the Subsidy Platform does not constitute an endorsement by the members of any of the four organizations of particular information accessible through this site.
IMF | OECD | The World Bank | World Trade Organization
<PortWatch — COMING in Late 2023>
The PortWatch project uses satellite-based vessel data and big data analytics to monitor trade disruptions from natural disasters. The PortWatch portal allows users to monitor local and global spillovers from natural disasters by leveraging insights on the international trade network.
Watch the full video of the April 11 Workshop here.
