Economic Security and the World Trading System

Economic Security and the World Trading System investigates the driving push towards geoeconomics, addressing factors underlying the departure from the traditional era of open markets to a more fragmented modern landscape. Through an exploration of the functions and failures of the World Trade Organization (WTO), it examines how the resilience of the world trading regime can be strengthened.This book examines how economic nationalism has moved into the mainstream, resulting in the reworking of national policies and undermining the multilateral system of international economic relations. Expert contributors review national attitudes towards economic security, including the EU Open Strategic Autonomy policy as well as differing industrial policies in the USA under Donald Trump and Joseph Biden and shifts in other jurisdictions. The contributors examine multilateral, regional and bilateral arrangements and shifts in approach over time. Drawing on the hegemonic stability theory in international relations, several chapters examine how a rules-based trade regime is affected when there is power asymmetry, when the leading country has the prerogative to choose the regime and when the priorities of the leading country change over time.This essential book is a valuable resource for students and scholars of economic and trade law, industrial economics, international relations, and regulation and governance. Officers of international institutions and practitioners in trade law will also benefit from its exploration of contemporary challenges faced by the WTO in a changing economic environment.