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Les liens et déconnexions de la politique commerciale : facteurs, gouvernance et effets des politiques commerciales intégrées dans une économie mondiale en fragmentation

Louise Dalingwater, Richard Ouellet, Gabriel Siles-Brügge and Jean-Baptiste Velut

Trade Policy Linkages and Disconnects: Drivers, governance and effects of integrated trade policies in a fragmenting world economy

Louise Dalingwater, Richard Ouellet, Gabriel Siles-Brügge and Jean-Baptiste Velut

The Role of Informality in Shaping Economic Policy Integration

Ceyhun Elgin
This paper examines the relationship between trade linkages, disconnects, and informality in shaping economic policy integration. As global trade undergoes significant transformations due to systemic shocks and structural changes, the informal economy emerges as a crucial yet often overlooked factor in trade policy formulation and analysis. The paper argues that the informal sector plays a critical role in both creating trade disconnects and catalyzing new trade linkages, challenging traditional approaches to trade governance while opening possibilities for innovative policy solutions. The study begins by establishing a conceptual framework that brings together notions of trade linkages, disconnects, and informality. It then explores how informality acts as a source of trade disconnects complicating data analysis, policy enforcement, and market dynamics. Simultaneously, the paper investigates the potential of informal economies to forge unexpected economic connections, particularly in cross-border trade and the digital economy. Examples from African informal trade networks and e-commerce platforms demonstrate this potential. The research then explores the governance implications of these dynamics, emphasizing the need for more inclusive trade policies that can effectively navigate the realities of economies with large informal sectors. It discusses emerging strategies for policy development, such as greater inclusion of informal sector representatives in trade policy formulation and the use of innovative policy instruments that bridge formal and informal economic structures. By bringing together concepts of trade linkages, disconnects, and informality, this research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing trade policymakers in the 21st century. It calls for a rethinking of how to approach trade policy formulation and implementation, advocating for new theoretical frameworks and governance models that can balance the dynamism of informal economies with the need for effective regulation and social protection.

Gendered Trade Governance during Covid-19

Adrienne Roberts and Silke Trommer
The scholarship on trade linkages investigates how trade policy interacts with other policy spheres, such as security, environment, labor or human rights. Recently, this literature has turned towards examining the politics of what is considered to lie “inside” and “outside” of the trade governance arena. Our article offers an engagement with such questions of “trade linkages vs. trade disconnects” from a feminist political economy perspective. We critically analyze the linkages and disconnects between trade and gender, and trade and social reproduction, which is integrally related to the former, in the global trade policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We find that global trade policy-makers acknowledged the link between trade and gender during the Covid-19 pandemic and recognized how Covid-19 revealed the insecurities associated with women’s position in productive and reproductive labor. At the same time, our analysis reveals that the Covid-19 trade response also reproduced gender based-inequalities in global trade governance, including the false distinction between production and social reproduction, the privileging of the former above the latter, and the lack of challenges to existing trade rules or orthodoxies, which themselves fuel gender-based inequalities and crises in social reproduction. Overall, we conclude that long-standing disembeddedness and exclusions can be reproduced in the making of new trade linkages, unless the power relations that underpin global trade and global trade governance are actively identified and disturbed.

The Green Virtues of Chinese Protectionism: A Comparative Analysis of EU and US Responses to the China Garbage Shock

Rachel L. Wellhausen and Jean-Baptiste Velut
Can economic protectionism in the Global South induce environmental reforms in the Global North? In 2017, China enacted “Operation National Sword,” which banned the import of a subset of internationally traded waste and scrap products. This unexpected and unprecedented collapse in Chinese demand – justified in China on environmental grounds and also an initial move in the brewing US-China trade war – shook global markets. Both the European Union and United States have long relied on exports to achieve “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) waste management goals, and China had become the dominant importer of a variety of their post-industrial and post-consumer products such as waste plastics. Thus, after 2017 EU and US waste exporters had to adjust, by reducing exports and/or diverting to new foreign markets. Conceivably, the collapse in global demand for certain waste products could ripple back to EU and US waste management policy, providing a sufficient shock to advance reform. At the same time, it is well established that the EU has environmental bona fides far exceeding those of the US. We use novel quantitative data to trace the nature of the shock to exports, providing evidence that disruptions to exports manifested in ways more visible to EU audiences than those in the US. Qualitatively, we show that EU-level policy has made meaningful strides, both within the EU and internationally, whereas initially bipartisan US interest frayed, leaving the problem of adjustment to US municipalities. Our analysis departs from conventional policy debates on the links between free trade and the environment to show that protective measures – not just trade agreements – can foster new policy linkages under certain circumstances. As what we term the “China garbage shock” reinforced rather than challenge the preexisting environmental policy cleavage between the EU and US, Chinese protectionism bolstered trade-environment linkages in a most-likely case but did not overcome trade disconnects in a least-likely case.

Inclusion or Exclusion of External Voices in Decision-Making on the EU Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR): Heard, but Not Listened To

Gerry Alons and Pieter Zwaan
Over the last years the EU has taken a more unilateral approach in linking sustainable development to trade by adopting legislation that affects the sustainable production and trade of products within and beyond its internal market. One of these laws is the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). By many, the adoption of the EUDR has been hailed as a successful linkage between sustainability and trade, and an important step in countering deforestation. Others, however, have criticized the policy making process and the limited possibilities it offered to engage with certain stakeholders and their concerns. Drawing on various theories of the policy process, this article sheds light on processes of exclusion and inclusion during the policymaking process of the EUDR. We show that political opportunity structures mediate the impact of stakeholder mobilization, with their institutional dimensions affecting access to policymakers and their discursive dimensions influencing policymakers' receptiveness to different arguments. We show how exclusion instead of inclusion contributed to stronger or more developed environment-trade linkage in the case of the EUDR.

Environmental Protection in Trade Agreements: A Critical and Constructive View of RCEP

Van Anh Ly
Trade-Environment linkages have become a prominent phenomenon in contemporary global relations. From being treated as exceptions within the GATT/WTO framework and in earlier regional trade agreements (RTAs), environmental protection has been firmly integrated in multilateral progressive agenda as well as new-generation RTAs as shared obligations rather than as mere acknowledgments of states’ “right to protect”. This evolution demonstrates how trade agreements increasingly contribute to environmental goals. Yet, the recent Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement (RCEP) fails to appropriately address environmental provisions within its framework. This contrasts with the traditional environmental policies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, at the central of RCEP, as well as with the more progressive approaches adopted by nearly all RCEP members. By tracing the evolution of trade-environment linkages, highlighting selected RTAs concluded by RCEP members, this paper evaluates RCEP’s environmental aspect and offers forward-looking recommendations for more effectively embedding environmental objectives, in line with contemporary trends in sustainable trade governance.

Plurilateralism within the WTO as a Catalyst for New Trade Linkages: An Analysis of the JSI on E-Commerce

Antoine Comont
This article analyzes the potential of the WTO's Joint Initiative on Electronic Commerce (JSI) as a catalyst for fostering e-commerce while meeting sustainable development issues. It explores the challenges of the transition from multilateralism to plurilateralism and traces the genesis of the Joint Initiative on Electronic Commerce. After providing an overview of the provisions of the draft agreement, the article aims to analyze the extent to which development issues have been taken into account by exploring the tensions arising from the negotiations. Inevitably, it identifies the major shortcomings that remain, particularly in terms of environmental sustainability and the inclusion of developing countries. Finally, looking to the future, the article examines the options for integrating this agreement into the WTO legal order.

Furthering Trade and Investment in India’s Healthcare Sector. What Cost to the Public Health Care System?

Louise Dalingwater
India is now the fifth largest global economy thanks to significant growth in exports and international exchange in recent years. The healthcare sector in India is one of the largest and fastest growing in terms of revenue and employment. It is however questionable to what extent increasing trade and investment in the health sector can effectively improve public health care delivery to the population, despite the importance of this critical sector . In line with the trade linkages special issue, this paper questions to what extent trade policy in health services is disembedded from the question of public health care provision. It is important to reiterate that protection of health systems implies engaging in issues beyond the pure economic agenda of countries wishing to further trade and investment. This paper thus takes a social constructivist approach to analyse the impact of the recent increase in trade and investment in the health sector in India. In particular, it draws on Ruggie’s concept of embedded liberalism to explore the potential effects of enhancing international trade and investment in this sector whilst still ensuring that sufficient welfare provisions are in place. It addresses two main questions: can domestic and international regulatory regimes ensure public health systems are protected and what are the trade offs to health care delivery of enhancing trade and investment with international private health care providers.

From Linkages to Disconnects: The Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)

Michèle Rioux and Charles-Olivier L’Homme
Labor provisions in the USMCA, and more specifically its RRM, offer a good case study for this special issue. As a tool for labor rights enforcement, it also is a strategic instrument to realign production away from low-cost production areas. The RRM represents a rare instance of an embedded “trade for” linkage, wherein trade policy is explicitly used as a tool to enforce labor rights. It embodies the kind of linkage that the special issue describes as the strongest form of trade integration, both substantively and procedurally, that ties a trade to social and other non-commercial objectives. However, this article reveals the fragility of trade linkages in a volatile political and strategic context. The re-election of Donald Trump endangers the future of the RRM and the broader social dimension of the USMCA. Trump’s America First doctrine and its deregulatory economic agenda suggest a more disembedded and strategically oriented trade policy. This potential rollback echoes the concept of “trade disconnects,” in which integrated social concerns are de-linked or marginalized when they conflict with nationalist, security-based, or purely commercial imperatives. Yet, the RRM remains an important trade policy instrument and is used by the new administration as a strategic tool to block “social dumping” in North America. This article has four sections: 1) the trade-labor linkage in the literature; 2) the USMCA’s RRM and how it improved the NAFTA side-agreement; 3) the RRM cases and their impacts; and 4) the future of the RRM. As the USMCA approaches its 2026 review, it is crucial to assess the RRM's effectiveness and its future trajectory.

Indigenous Participation: Canada's Trade for Reconciliation

Natalia Serrano Burbano
The constitutional recognition of reconciliation has paved the way for the integration of the Crown’s domestic obligations toward Indigenous peoples into Canada’s international commitments. In this context, trade policy has emerged as an additional avenue through which the national objective of reconciliation may be advanced. This paper examines the incorporation of Indigenous peoples’ rights and interests in six Canadian trade agreements concluded following the launch of Canada’s Progressive Trade Agenda. It analyzes the normative innovations introduced and evaluates the extent to which these agreements move beyond symbolic recognition toward meaningful participation. While the degree of integration varies across agreements, the findings suggest that Canadian trade policy increasingly reflects an effort to align international economic governance with the domestic imperative of reconciliation.

L’OMC appartient au futur : entretien avec Gabrielle Marceau sur les nouveaux liens commerciaux

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