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This chapter focuses on the interests of developing countries in the GATT/WTO system. In view of all the evidence, it should be clear that trade is important to developing countries and that their continued engagement in the global trading system is essential as a matter of development strategy.

This chapter analyzes the conditions needed to design and implement successful special economic zones and industrial parks. It discusses long-term trends and fundamental issues in global trade since trade is the main source of growth for low-income countries that have limited domestic demand. In recent years the story of global trade has often been presented by some economists and development experts as a cause for concern on the export-led growth model that made possible the so-called Asian Miracle that is no longer available for poor countries in Africa or South Asia. But statistics appear to show a turning tide: the value of world merchandise exports rose from $2.03 trillion in 1980 to $18.26 trillion in 2011, equivalent to 7.3 percent growth per year on average in current dollar terms according to WTO trade statistics. But from 2012 to 2014, world trade growth averaged only 2.2 percent, well below the average for the proceeding 20-year period. This has raised the question whether the same shaping factors that have given rise to today's global trade system are likely to continue in the medium and long term.

This chapter reviews the history of successes and failures in international monetary and financial reform in two eras of globalization: the late nineteenth century and the late twentieth century, and in the period in between. The narrative proposes the hypothesis that a consensus on the need for monetary and financial reform is likely to develop when such reform is seen as essential for the defense of the global trading system. A commentary is also included at the end of the chapter.

Trade expansion in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) years depended in part on supporting “safety nets” and policy flexibility that prevented trade from causing severe disruption in those wealthier countries that dominated trade negotiations. John Ruggie’s institutional theory dubbed this arrangement “embedded liberalism,” whose validity still holds. But in developing countries, the challenges of deficient infrastructure and domestic economic institutions to support trade have made many of them reluctant to bargain for trade liberalization, an important issue in the link between trade and development. “Aid for trade” represents the international transfer of resources and technical assistance to build such infrastructure and make trade more efficient, with the goal of integrating developing countries into the global trading system. The 2013 Trade Facilitation Agreement was an important step forward in linking aid with World Trade Organization (WTO) trade reforms and may signal further efforts to increase developing country reciprocity.

The Industrial Revolution was not only about the conditions of supply in the West. It was also about the development of global trading systems that positioned the West as a nodal point in a global exchange of goods and materials. This chapter makes a clear case for the significance of trade with Asia in the development of the European economies. It examines critically the historiography on the world and the Industrial Revolution: it contrasts the fairly expansive view that Hobsbawm gave to the Industrial Revolution with historiography’s turning first inwards, to Europe only (Landes) and to Britain only (Wrigley, Allen), then outward again, in recent approaches. By emphasizing the interconnectedness of economic development, it raises significant questions about how all scholars should approach the global nature of the modern capitalist economy.

This chapter explores the fundamental premises and economic underpinnings of the global trading system that are relevant to trade and human rights law, with particular emphasis on the basic concepts of international trade law in the Americas. It begins with an overview of the GATT and the World Trade Organization (WTO) before turning to a discussion of the principles of absolute advantage and comparative advantage. It then considers the four pillars of GATT and exceptions to the pillars, along with WTO dispute settlement. Finally, it assesses trade in the Americas by citing free trade agreements, the case of Cuba, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas.