Category: international trade
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A Website Can Open the Door. Can Women-Led SMEs Walk Through It?
Digital trade offers women entrepreneurs a route into international markets. Turning visibility into sustained export earnings requires a much wider system of support. Imagine a woman running a small garment enterprise. She creates an attractive website, displays her products and receives an enquiry from an overseas buyer. The digital connection…
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The Green Trade Facilitation Paradox: When Environmental Compliance Becomes a New Barrier to Global Trade
GLOBAL TRADE, ENVIRONMENT AND MSME COMPETITIVENESS | 30 OCTOBER 2026 The world is demanding greener products, cleaner supply chains and greater environmental accountability. But are international trade systems equipped to verify these requirements without creating another generation of invisible trade barriers? Environmental Ambition Is Moving Faster Than Trade Infrastructure International…
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The Global Value-Capture Crisis: Producing More but Earning Less
Why the next great economic divide will be between countries that manufacture products and countries that control the value created by them. The world economy is entering a new contradiction: countries are producing more, exporting more, attracting more foreign investment, and building more factories, yet these achievements do not necessarily…
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The Global Trade Dependency Paradox: Countries Want Independence but Cannot Afford Isolation
GLOBAL ECONOMY | INTERNATIONAL TRADE | GEOECONOMICS | OCTOBER 2026 The emerging contradiction of the twenty-first-century economy is that nations want greater economic sovereignty while their prosperity increasingly depends on production networks they cannot control alone. The future of global trade may not be determined by who becomes self-reliant, but…
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Global trade and export competitiveness
Exports Can Rise While External Vulnerability DeepensIndia’s economic debate frequently treats exports as success and imports as failure. History is more complicated. Industrialisation depended on imported machines, and modern exporters require imported energy, electronics, chemicals and specialised materials. A growing economy can rationally import more while building future capability.September 2026…
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BRICS and the Global Value Chain Paradox
More Trade, But Who Captures the Value? Why the future of BRICS will depend less on the volume of trade among its members and more on who controls technology, production, design and value addition. The Rise of BRICS: Economic Size Is Not Industrial Power The emergence of BRICS represents one…
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When the Origin of a Product Becomes as Valuable as the Product Itself
The End of the Anonymous Commodity For centuries, international trade operated on a relatively simple principle: buyers were primarily interested in what a product was, how much it cost, and whether it met the required quality standards. Where the raw materials originated, who processed them, how workers were treated, and…
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The Passport of the Product
The Next Global Trade Barrier May Not Be a Tariff, but the Absence of Information From the Movement of Goods to the Movement of Evidence For centuries, international trade was built around the physical movement of goods. Ships carried spices, textiles, metals and machinery across borders. Customs authorities examined their…
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The Compliance Export Industry
The Next Global Business May Not Be Manufacturing Products but Certifying Their Acceptability The Changing Economics of Global Trade For decades, international trade followed a relatively simple economic logic. Countries produced goods, competed on prices, improved quality and searched for overseas buyers. Governments negotiated tariffs, exporters managed logistics, and international…
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Textiles and Apparel: The Cliff Has Moved by Three Months, but the Uncertainty Remains
India has protected its textile exporters from an immediate policy shock. But extending an incentive is not the same as creating a predictable export environment. The real challenge is no longer simply the cost of exporting. It is the cost of not knowing what exporting will cost tomorrow. The Relief…
