Each year, the Hinrich Foundation in partnership with the IMD Business School’s World Competitiveness Center ranks 30 major economies on how they fare in managing and participating in global trade. We launch the 2023 edition today, showing how these key economies, spread across the Asia-Pacific, United States, Britain, and parts of Latin America, stack up against 71 indicators across economic, societal, and environmental measures. These include not just commonplace factors such as current account levels, tariffs, and monetary policy, but also key outcomes of social investment from gains in trade such as education, healthcare, and carbon management, among others. As a new era of global geoeconomic fragmentation threatens to erode the achievements of decades of globalization, the index is a blueprint of how we manage economic change and an expression of our Foundation’s mission to advance sustainable global trade.
WHITE PAPER & INFOGRAPHIC
Measuring trade sustainability in a fragmenting world
The global trade system is experiencing fragmentation that threatens to erode the achievements of 70 years of globalization. Protectionist trade policies are being implemented under the guise of responding to the headwinds of post-pandemic inflation and geopolitical tensions. The Sustainable Trade Index measures these policy changes. This year, we find non-tariff barriers and trade costs on the rise, with worsening logistics performance, rule of law, and use of forced labor. What we learn from this year’s Hinrich-IMD STI should help policy makers, businesses, and communities set a path back to sustainable globalization.
The most consequential example of a well-intentioned environmental policy which complicates the trade picture could turn out to be Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, or CBAM, Senior Research Fellow Stephen Olson writes. Despite its noble intentions and anticipated environmental upsides, CBAM will further stress an already over-stressed trade system. It will function as a trade restriction in much the same way tariffs do. CBAM could prove to be even more challenging from the perspective of trade governance. Sustainable trade is about the need to strike the best balance: How should we manage the trade-offs?
.jpg?upscale=true&width=420&upscale=true&name=STI2023_WebBanners_Generic_600x750%20(1).jpg)
.jpg?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=STI-2023-Overall-Ranking-Map-thumbnail%20(1).jpg)
.png?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=STI%202023%20launch%20event%20(16%20x%209).png)
%20(3)%20(1).png?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=STI%202022%20eDM%20special%20visual%20(1280%20%C3%97%20500%20px)%20(3)%20(1).png)
