International Trade in the Age of Turbulent Uncertainty, Globalization, Regionalization and Pandemic

Abstract

In the coming years, large-scale changes are inevitable in the development of international trade, caused to a large extent by the conflict between the USA and China, the degradation of the WTO, and most importantly, the development of integration processes in various regionsand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global problems of economic development in general. This paper analyzes the modern aspects of the international trade policy system in the context of the active development of integration processes in various regions, assesses the role of the WTO and some ways to improve its activities in accordance with modern challenges.

Economic studies identified the weaknesses in the basic anti-dumping provisions of the WTO that could contribute to abusea long time ago, and instead suggested relying on the principles and criteria of anticompetitive struggle. The details of such criticisms require the improvement of the legal approaches and analytical methods of the WTO as an institution for regulating international trade.

This paper outlines some of the main directions and problems of the transformation of the WTO in the context of comparing the approaches to them. Despite the fact that world leaders have begun discussions on reforming the WTO, complete unanimity has not yet been observed. It is still unclear, even according to the WTO, what these discussions will lead to, which areas of trade promise the greatest prospects in the future, and which will require reorganization.
However, the systematic view of the authors shows that the burden of these problems was very unbalanced. The main idea of this study is that the global regulation of international trade and the influence of turbulent currents of uncertainties at the national level can be improved with a higher degree of sustainable win-win approaches to reforming the WTO and regional spaces of trade relations. This means that the draft of the future international trade order, especially if it is based on a network of related regional and interregional trade agreements, can become increasingly practical for the effectiveness of trade relations and public confidence regarding the idea of openness and globalization.

Keywords: international trade, transformation of trade relations, WTO, trade conflicts, regional integration, global pandemic

JEL Classification: F02; F13; F63; F40