At the Center on Inclusive Trade and Development, we are continuing Georgetown's legacy as a leader in international trade law by building a first-of-its-kind, interdisciplinary research hub.
Our scholars and students are developing innovative, inclusive approaches to the challenges facing the global trading system today.
CITD will hold its second Rethinking World Trade conference on Wednesday April 3 on the margins of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) spring meeting. Rethinking World Trade 2024 will bring together the academic community, trade practitioners, and policymakers to examine new ideas for a better trading system that is inclusive of all and promotes sustainable development. Rethinking World Trade 2024 will be a half day-long, in-person event at the Georgetown University Law Center with panelists presenting avant-garde research and policy recommendations.
This year’s Rethinking World Trade conference will feature two panels on the following themes: 1) the US-China Relations in a “Post-China Shock” Era, and 2) the Rise of Subsidies and the Clash of Industrial Policy. The event will also feature the launch of the new book, The Sustainability Revolution in Trade Agreements, edited by Kathleen Claussen and Geraldo Vidigal. We will close the event with a keynote speaker who will be confirmed.
February 21, 2024Blog by Emilie Kerstens, Michiru Ishihara, Sae Kobayashi
In February 2024, trade ministers will convene for the 13th edition of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) biennial Ministerial Conference (MC13). Historically, these negotiations have proven challenging, often yielding limited outcomes. The preceding Ministerial Conference (MC12) required hard-won compromises resulting in a limited patent waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, an incomplete fisheries subsidies agreement, narrow disciplines related to export restrictions to ease food insecurity, and broad commitments toward WTO reform. Thirty years after the creation of the WTO, there are concerns about its relevance. These concerns stem from perceptions that its three critical functions –negotiation, dispute settlement, and transparency through monitoring– are inadequate in addressing the challenges posed by climate change, the digital divide, and the proliferation of investment restrictions, economic sanctions, economic coercion, and industrial and agricultural subsidies. At the heart of these discussions lies the efficacy of the WTO in navigating contemporary challenges, raising questions about its adaptability in a world marked by a polycrisis. Hence, the question remains: how might MC13 contribute to shape the future of world trade?
On November 1st, Katrin Kuhlmann, CITD Co-Director, joined the Global Economic Ideas Festival (GEIF). This annual global conference hosted by the Institute of Certified Chartered Economists (ICCE) and is set to bring together world leaders and top global policy shapers in interactive panel sessions and insightful keynotes.
CITD Co-Director Jennifer Hillman, and CFR Fellow for Trade Policy Inu Manak, have published a new report on international rules on subsidies. According to the authors, “The United States should lead the effort to reshape the global rules to better serve its own interests and the international trading system’s changing realities." The authors also contend that such an effort “would give the United States a powerful tool to address its twin concerns over competition with China and fighting climate change. It would also allow the WTO and the world to come closer to a more equitable, resilient, and sustainable international economic order.”
TESS, the Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs, convened a diverse group of eminent legal experts, including CITD Co-Director Jennifer Hillman, to foster shared understanding of existing principles in international law that can guide policymakers when debating, designing and implementing trade-related climate measures.
CITD Co-Director Jennifer Hillman has been working for the last 18 months with three well-known professors of international trade law, Joost Pauwelyn (Graduate Institute, Geneva), Henry Gao (Singapore Management University) and Nicolas Lamp (Queens University) to create something brand new: a fully online, free, digital textbook for international trade law students. This textbook is called "International Trade Law: A Casebook for a System in Crisis."
The casebook is currently in its open beta version, with 16 core chapters ready and the final five chapters to be added soon. The book is now sufficiently advanced to prove potentially useful to students and teachers alike.
CITD is proud to announce the publication of "Using Trade Tools to Fight Climate Change", co-edited by our Co-Director Jennifer Hillman and Loriane Damian. This book is focused on practical measures that can be taken to harness the power of trade and trade tools to address climate change. Ranging from promoting the transfer of technology, to allowing local cement production to capture and store carbon, to using services commitments to open doors to climate migrants, to details on everything from green steel to a circular plastics economy to greenhouse gas measurement metrics to carbon clubs, the book is based on papers written by Georgetown Law students.
This book offers sound legal assessments of what can make a climate measure WTO consistent and how new norms could be established to separate bad from good subsidies. An excellent guide for policymakers looking to take bolder action on climate change through trade measures without triggering trade reprisals.
CITD's held its first annual spring conference, Rethinking World Trade 2023, on Thursday April 13 on the margins of the World Bank/IMF spring meetings. The conference brought together the academic community, trade practitioners, and policymakers to reimagine our trading system in the midst of the paradigm shift occurring in the trade realm and the increasing focus on inclusive and sustainable trade.
Rethinking World Trade 2023 conference featured four panels on the following themes: 1) what is working and not working with the global trading system; 2) what is inclusive trade and development, and how should it shape the global trading system of the future; 3) how could initiatives on gender and trade deliver real results; and 4) what are the building blocks of an inclusive digital trade agenda.
On March 29, 2023, renowned China expert and trade law scholar Professor Henry Gao of Singapore Management University visited Georgetown Law for a discussion of his most recent book co-authored with Professor Weihuan Zhou and entitled “Between Market Economy and State Capitalism: China's State-Owned Enterprises and the World Trading System.”
This event was organized by the Center on Inclusive Trade and Development in collaboration with the Georgetown Society for Trade Investment and Development and the Center for Asian Law. CITD’s co-director, Professor Jennifer Hillman, facilitated the discussion. In his talk, Professor Gao highlighted two problems and one promise on the topic on which the book turns: China’s state-dominated economy and the challenges the Chinese model poses to the multilateral trading system.
Our scholars and students are developing innovative, inclusive approaches to the challenges facing the global trading system today.
