Must Do Better: Trade & Industrial Policy and the SDGs
The 30th Global Trade Alert Report
The 30th Global Trade Alert Report
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted by governments in 2015. Central to that Agenda is making progress on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Implemented at a time when globalisation is being buffeted by populism, a pandemic and its fallout, intensifying geopolitical rivalry, and attendant supply chain reconfiguration, the contribution of government commercial policies to attaining these Goals is in the spotlight.
Drawing upon evidence from tens of thousands of unilateral trade, investment, industrial and other policy steps that affect cross-border commerce, this report sheds light on that contribution. Central to this analysis is developing for the indicators associated with seven SDGs a mapping between different types of commercial policy interventions and the likely impact on those indicators.
The extent to which there is a tension between the trade and investment reform and attaining the SDGs is one of the central questions addressed in this report. So is the interpretation of evidence of the extent of such tensions, a matter of critical importance given the doubts of many in the trade policy community as to the logic and drafting of some of the SDGs. The report also identifies four reform scenarios whereby openness to cross-border commerce can contribute more to the attainment of the SDGs.