OUR STORY

CITD was founded in 2022 to bring together scholars, students, practitioners, NGOs, business and labor leaders, and international organizations to find solutions to the challenges facing the international trading system and develop global approaches to making trade rules more inclusive and sustainable.

Continuing the legacy and the pioneering work of Professor John Jackson, CITD’s partnership with the International Institute of Economic Law empowers both centers to perpetuate top-tier scholarship on inclusive international trade policy. CITD builds upon Georgetown law’s long history of engagement as a thought leader, placing it again at the forefront of the profound shift that is occurring in international trade law.

OUR VISION

At CITD we believe that understanding how to create a future rules-based trading system that addresses the implications of trade rules for development, the environment, global health, and labor rights is only possible with full and fair participation in the global trading system.

OUR WORK

We provide a forum for researchers and scholars to engage in research, writing, and teaching around four key pillars:

Development: linking economic and social development and international economic law

Labor and Women’s Empowerment: examining the impact of trade on labor, racial, and gender issues

Environment and Climate Change: focusing on how trade can play a positive role in environmental and sustainable development

WTO Institutional Reform and Governance: examining the contours of needed reform to the WTO rules and the WTO as an institution

Today, the rules-based international trading system faces its most significant turning point in decades. Around the world, multilateral alliances are breaking apart, the WTO’s core mission of policing discrimination is out-of-date, and the forces that pushed the world toward globalization over the past 40 years are shifting. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a reexamination of supply chains, while the need for the trading system to affirmatively contribute to the fight against climate change and the growth in income inequality has become urgent. Countries and communities are also pressing for approaches that address historical biases and inequities and take into account a diverse range of state and individual needs. As the multilateral system comes under strain, new models for international trade law are emerging, particularly in the form of regional trade agreements (RTAs), shaping law in areas where the WTO has not been able to gain ground, such as sustainability, digital regulation, gender equity and more sustainable investment regimes.

Understanding how we get from where we are today to a future rules-based trading system that addresses the implications of trade rules for development, for the environment, for global health, and for labor rights is the core of CITD. Our work engages both a top-down approach that examines international trading systems and how they can be reformed and revitalized to meet these challenges and a bottom-up assessment of what women, workers, farmers, and small enterprises (MSMEs) need to ensure their full and fair participation in the global trading system.

PARTNER WITH CITD

CITD seeks to partner with foundations, NGOs and corporations interested in promoting the establishment of a new paradigm for global trading rules and in putting trade rules to work promoting sustainable development around the world. 

If you are interested in partnering with CITD, please contact us at citd@georgetown.edu.