Last Updated: September 3, 2024
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).
Digital Trade for Development explores the opportunities and challenges for developing economies arising from digital trade and discusses the role of international cooperation in tackling these opportunities and challenges.
Co-published in 2023 by the IMF, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Bank, and the 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.
The paper aims to provide a conceptual framework and guiding principles for the coverage of Industrial Policy (IP) in IMF surveillance. It proposes a working definition of industrial policy, discusses its objectives and main instruments, and provides a brief review of academic literature on IP.
This note aims to support country teams with staff guidance, useful questions for engagement with national authorities, and resources on trade related aspects of industrial policies.
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.
Available data show a marked increase in subsidy utilization in China and in other major economies between 2009 and 2022. In this paper, we investigate the effects that China's subsidies have on international trade flows at the product level over this period.
As governments resort to industrial policies to achieve economic and non-economic objectives, the number of subsidies implemented each year has more than tripled in the last decade. Using detailed data across a large number of advanced and emerging economies, we empirically investigate the effects of domestic subsidies on international trade flows.
This paper introduces the New Industrial Policy Observatory (NIPO) dataset and documents emergent patterns of policy intervention during 2023 associated with the return of industrial policy.
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.
The paper aims to provide a conceptual framework and guiding principles for the coverage of Industrial Policy (IP) in IMF surveillance. It proposes a working definition of industrial policy, discusses its objectives and main instruments, and provides a brief review of academic literature on IP.
This note aims to support country teams with staff guidance, useful questions for engagement with national authorities, and resources on trade related aspects of industrial policies.
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.
Available data show a marked increase in subsidy utilization in China and in other major economies between 2009 and 2022. In this paper, we investigate the effects that China's subsidies have on international trade flows at the product level over this period.
As governments resort to industrial policies to achieve economic and non-economic objectives, the number of subsidies implemented each year has more than tripled in the last decade. Using detailed data across a large number of advanced and emerging economies, we empirically investigate the effects of domestic subsidies on international trade flows.
This paper introduces the New Industrial Policy Observatory (NIPO) dataset and documents emergent patterns of policy intervention during 2023 associated with the return of industrial policy.
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.
This conference discusses geopolitical tensions, carbon pricing, services, trade patterns, development, and climate change, as well as a policy panel with chief economists from each institution on industrial policy and the role of international organizations.
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)
This conference discusses geopolitical tensions, carbon pricing, services, trade patterns, development, and climate change, as well as a policy panel with chief economists from each institution on industrial policy and the role of international organizations.
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)
Worries that China’s external surpluses result from industrial policies reflect an incomplete view
The world is changing so quickly it’s hard to think of one aspect of our economic lives that hasn’t shifted from what it was only a few years ago. Trade is no exception. New technologies, the re-emergence of industrial policy, and rising geopolitical tensions are all putting added pressure on the international trading system. Michele Ruta is a trade expert at the IMF. He says global cooperation is key to preventing economic fragmentation, from which no one benefits. Transcript
Check out the IMF’s global trade webpage
And an entire issue of the IMF's Finance and Development magazine on Trade
Reducing trade barriers, easing regulatory constraints, and upgrading infrastructure can mitigate challenges and help countries leverage new opportunities.
In the first two months of 2024, Suez Canal trade dropped by 50 percent from a year earlier while trade through the Panama Canal fell by 32 percent, disrupting supply chains and distorting key macroeconomic indicators
Industrial policy had its heyday in the 1950s and 60s when governments moved to boost national competitiveness amid burgeoning global trade. Economists have been predicting the return of industrial policy of late- and there’s no question it’s back, but what does today’s industrial policy look like? Michele Ruta is a trade expert at the IMF, and along with some colleagues compiled a new dataset that shows the extent to which new industrial policies are being used and what their real impact might be on the global economy. Transcript
Check out the IMF’s global trade webpage
Policymakers should consider the benefits of international rules that promote a predictable policy environment, including continued tariff-free digital imports
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
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.
Learn more at below links:
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
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.
Learn more at below links:
