WTO Geneva Fabrice Coffrini/Getty Images

Don’t Cry Over Dead Trade Agreements

While developing countries may continue to pursue smaller trade agreements, the two major deals on the table, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, are as good as dead after the election of Donald Trump as US president. We should not mourn their passing.

CAMBRIDGE – The seven decades since the end of World War II were an era of trade agreements. The world’s major economies were in a perpetual state of trade negotiations, concluding two major global multilateral deals: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the treaty establishing the World Trade Organization. In addition, more than 500 bilateral and regional trade agreements were signed – the vast majority of them since the WTO replaced the GATT in 1995.

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