MC13: Hinrich Foundation’s Keith Rockwell – WTO relevance at stake  Following a disappointing 13th WTO ministerial conference in Abu Dhabi last week “A collapse of the organization is not impending, but its relevance remains the biggest question looming over the WTO,” writes Keith Rockwell, who has served many years as …

This week’s international trade think tanks’ focus: The WTO and the question of restoring its dispute mechanism, the US toying with the idea of rescinding China’s most-favoured nation status and the latter’s global product-level dominance.  

Here are this week’s highlights from trade focused international think tanks.  

In focus with think tanks this week: the World Trade Organization and US trade policy. 

The WTO is in focus in this first week of work after the Christmas break as the countdown to MC13 begins. And so is the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework with the US elections around the corner.

Washington based CATO Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies have been busy breaking down a newly released select committee report on Sino-American economic relations while the WTO’s chief economist Ralph Ossa was focused on digital trade.  

International think tanks seem to be slowing down ahead of the holiday season but the Hinrich Foundation and UK Trade Policy Observatory have released some detailed work on the realities of decoupling and trade agreements. 

The question of China and taxing carbon intensive goods has dominated the think tank picture this week, with IPEF topping this all up.