The sharp drop in commodity prices has had a sizeable impact on Latin America's short term growth prospects. The decline in terms of trade has also revealed, once again, the low productivity of the region's economies. Investing in infrastructure could help Latin America simultaneously address these short and long term challenges.

With Brexit and the election of D. Trump, tariffs and exchange rates are back at the centre stage of policy debates. This column revisits the assumptions economists make when estimating how tariffs and exchange rates affect exporters’ performance.

Regulation is a barrier to trade. A recent CEPII Working Paper uses French firm-level panel data to assess how technical barriers to trade impact firms’ exports.

The US President has a problem with the American geography – a problem called Mexico.

Dec. 1st may well be remembered in the history books of the 22nd century as the beginning of the end of globalization. This is the day when the President-elect paraded his “victory” over the management of Carrier International, a unit of United Technologies that had announced the move of 2,000 some jobs to Mexico.

The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook points to weak demand and investment as the main factor behind the world trade slowdown. I argue that this conclusion is overblown and that the high-quality underlying work falls well short of explaining the slow trade puzzle.

The idea that exchange rate volatility could be detrimental to international trade is widely accepted. Surprisingly, macroeconomic evidence on its impact on trade yields either small or insignificant effect on aggregate outcomes. This column suggests that the behavior of big, multi-destination firms help explain this puzzle.

The U.S. administration insists on the fact that the TPP is ‘enforceable’. If experience of previous US trade agreements is to offer any guidance, this enforceability cannot be taken for granted. Yet the stakes are high for both regional trade rules’ credibility, and for multilateralism’s future.

Despite the magnitude of the Transpacific Partnership Agreement concluded by the United States, the EU should not heed calls to rush into concluding ongoing Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership talks under the Obama administration at any cost, and focus instead on negotiating a good agreement.

Regulatory coherence is claimed to be the core of the potential economic stakes in the TTIP. As the 9th Round of Negotiations is being convened in New York City, time has come for discussions to take a more concrete form.