Geopolitics and the World Trading System

12.03.2025 14:15 – 15:30

GTDW@IEE

Abstract:

Until the beginning of this century, the GATT/WTO system worked. Economic research provided a compelling explanation. It showed that if governments maximize the well-being of their own countries broadly defined, GATT/WTO principles would facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation over their trade policy choices. Now heightened geopolitical rivalry seems to have undermined the WTO. A simple transposition of the previous rationalization suggests that geopolitics and trade cooperation are not compatible. We show that this is only true if rivalry eclipses any consideration of own-country well-being. In all other circumstances, there are gains from trade cooperation even with geopolitics. Furthermore, the WTO’s relevance is in question only if it adheres too rigidly to its existing rules and norms. Through measured adaptation to the geopolitical imperative, the WTO can continue to thrive as a forum for multilateral trade cooperation in the age of geopolitics.

Bioography :

Robert W. Staiger is the Roth Family Distinguished Professor in the Arts and Sciences and Professor of
Economics at Dartmouth College, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research,
and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. An Editor of the Journal of International Economics from 2010 through 2017, Staiger specializes in the study of international trade policy rules and institutions, with particular emphasis on the economics of the GATT/WTO. His research has been published in a variety of academic journals, and in two books, The Economics of the World Trading System, co-authored with Kyle Bagwell and published by MIT Press (2002), and A World Trading System for the Twenty-First Century, published by MIT Press in its Ohlin Lecture series in December of 2022. Staiger also served as Editor, with Kyle Bagwell, of The Handbook of Commercial Policy, published by Elsevier in December 2016.

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