Agricultural trade plays a crucial role in providing livelihoods for farmers and people employed along the food supply chain and contributes to reducing global food insecurity. A growing share of agro-food trade involves global value chains (GVCs), where the different stages of agricultural and food production processes are spread over several countries.

The digital transformation has led to unprecedented reductions in the costs of engaging in international trade, changing how and what we trade, and who can trade. However, it has also given rise to new regulatory challenges that make it more difficult for governments to ensure that the opportunities from digital trade are realised and shared more inclusively.

The OECD is the key multilateral negotiating forum where international disciplines for officially supported export credits are agreed, implemented, and monitored. These disciplines establish a level playing field for exporters via a series of financial and good governance rules.

Globalisation creates opportunities for workers, consumers and firms and has helped lift millions out of poverty. Open markets are a source of economic resilience and diversification along supply chains. Open economies grow faster than closed ones but a fair distribution of those gains does not happen automatically. The OECD’s work in support of open markets and a rules-based international trading system aims at making trade work for all.

About 70% of international trade involves global value chains (GVCs), as services, raw materials, parts, and components cross borders – often numerous times. A strong trend has emerged towards the international dispersion of value chain activities such as design, production, marketing, distribution, etc. This emergence of GVCs and increased interest in their sustainability and resilience requires analysing supply chains as a whole and developing policies around them.

The integrated global economy provides opportunities for citizens and businesses, but also for criminals running illicit trade networks in, for example, counterfeits, illicit medicines, wildlife, narcotics, excise goods, and raw materials. Countering illicit trade is essential to prevent wide-ranging damaging effects, from exposure of citizens to dangerous products to loss of needed tax revenue.

International trade is a major driver of economic growth: exporting firms earn higher profits, pay higher wages, and grow faster than non-exporting firms. Yet these benefits are not evenly distributed. Ensuring that businesses led by women, Indigenous People, and other historically disadvantaged groups are able to benefit from the opportunities provided by international trade will contribute to greater societal equality and higher economic growth.

Services play a vital role in the global economy. They generate more than two-thirds of global gross domestic product (GDP), attract over three-quarters of foreign direct investment in advanced economies, employ the most workers, and create the most new jobs worldwide. In a modern digital economy, trade in services ensures access to information, skills and technology. Yet trade in services remains affected by a range of barriers that threaten to undermine these potential benefits.

Subsidies and government support can come in many forms, with different types prevalent in different sectors. While some types of support are relatively well understood, others are much more difficult to identify and measure. A common understanding of the nature and scale of subsidies across sectors is a critical first step in international co-operation to address concerns about the global level playing field.

OECD work on trade and sustainability contributes to enhancing the understanding of how trade and the environment interact and to documenting and examining the effect of trade policies and trade-related environmental policies on trade, climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. In particular, we look at how trade facilitation can ensure environmental goods and services cross borders smoothly and that trade-related environmental policies do not hamper trade more than necessary.