This blog is about the gap between the old GATT mansion (Villa Bocage) and the modern WTO edifice (Centre William Rappard) – or to explain that more clearly it explores the grey area between the...

Peter died last Sunday in a hospital in Dublin, his home city and home country. He was aged 71. He had suffered a heart attack in September 2016, which proved ultimately to be fatal, and had been in...

In a previous blog I described the UK trade agenda, the four principal areas where the UK will be losing trade access or trade rights and privileges as a result of Brexit.  I presume that the...

The 10th Ministerial Conference of the WTO finished on Saturday night in Nairobi with a package of agreements the WTO itself calls “historic”. Considering that some believed that the WTO was...

The history of international economic cooperation teaches us one important lesson: every form of cooperation will die – essentially if not formally – if it does not adapt to new conditions for...

There's no point any longer in pretending: The geo-economic race over the Asia-Pacific is now on - and in the open. Will the TPP coalition declare victory at the next week's APEC summit – and...

Do you sometimes wonder about the world trade statistics, published by the WTO? Behind the headline numbers, there is a lot to explore … Until 1995, when the GATS was added to the corpus of...

India’s economy has become much more liberal over the last 20 years. Its applied tariff rate has gone down from a high 113% in 1990-91 to a low 13.7 by taking a simple average although some tariff...

After twelve years of tedious negotiations, only a fraction of the original Doha mandate remains. One is filled with certain surprise and relief, as the news of the Bali agreement reach us on...

To clarify, ECIPE proposed the International Digital Economy Agreement (IDEA for short) in 2010 to expand the WTO IT Agreement (ITA) to cover both goods and services. In March 2012, this idea was...