Redesigning Canadian Trade Policies for New Global Realities

In Redesigning Canadian Trade Policies for New Global Realities, leading academics, government researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders from Canada and abroad analyze how changes in global commerce, technology, and shifting economic and geopolitical power affect Canada, and what this means for policy. In recent decades, global commerce has changed dramatically. Production processes have fragmented across borders and international trade is about much more than trading final goods; increasingly it requires incorporating imports, performing intermediate tasks and services, exchanging know-how, as well as the use of foreign investment and foreign affiliate sales. The global policy context is also evolving with the rise of emerging economies and the proliferation of regional trade deals. Twenty-first-century trade negotiations are quite complex, covering numerous policy areas and involving several federal government departments and levels of government. Taken together, these developments represent new realities for Canadian governments, businesses, workers, and citizens. Applying new perspectives from frontier research on global value chains and firm-level trade theory, this volume presents new empirical evidence and explores its policy implications for trade negotiations, foreign investment, services, regulation, digital trade, and innovation. By comprehensively reimagining the role of contemporary trade policies, Redesigning Canadian Trade Policies for New Global Realities, is essential reading for anyone trying to navigate the new global trade context.

Stephen Tapp is a research director at the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

Ari Van Assche is an associate professor at the Department of International Business at HEC Montréal.

Robert Wolfe is a professor at the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University.