Master of Public Policy   Master of International Affairs   Master of Data Science for Public Policy  

The Political Economy of World Trade

The international trade environment is changing rapidly. Great power politics, a competition of ideas and systems, cold and hot conflicts as well as wars threaten to divide the world into new blocks – large autocracies on one side and liberal democracies on the other – and many countries in the middle. Trade is more and more seen from a security lens: as a source of national vulnerabilities on one hand side, and as coercive, strategic instrument on the other. This will massively impact trade flows, accelerating the re-regionalization and re-nationalization of value chains, which started a few years ago and gained momentum during the Covid-19 pandemic, also fueled by the power competition between the United States and China. At the same time, the WTO, which is already fragile, is threatened to be weakened even further – at a time when a strong institution is more important than ever.

 

“The Political Economy of World Trade” aims at providing a hands-on approach to the analysis of international trade relations. This course has a strong policy orientation, using current issues and challenges in trade policy-making as the starting point of each session. Economic research and theoretical elements will be studied to come to concrete policy options. Our class features five sections: 1. drivers of world trade; 2. the political economy of trade policy-making; 3. the multilateral trading system; 4. preferential trade agreements, 5. a critical look at trade.