WTO 2.0: Governance of 21st century trade

The cross-border flows of goods, investment, services, know-how and people associated with international production networks–call it ‘supply-chain trade’ for short–has transformed the world. The WTO has not kept pace. This paper argues that adapting world trade governance to the realities of supply-chain trade will require a new organization–a WTO 2.0 as it were. Reasoning on the optimal nature of the new organization is based on the nature of supply-chain trade, the nature of the disciplines that underpin it, and the nature of the gains from cooperation.