https://hdl.handle.net/10419/64246 Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network on Trade (ARTNeT), Bangkok 2026-09-14T01:48:12Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/343181 Title: Understanding country-level trade deflections during shocks: Evidence from commodity trade flows at the HS4 level and insights for ex-ante frameworks Authors: Schiel, Daniel; Kravchenko, Alexey Abstract: When a major export market closes, where do the displaced goods go? This paper examines country-level trade deflections during trade shocks using UN Comtrade commodity flows at the HS4 level for 2014-2024. Five case studies - China's plasticwaste import ban, anti-dumping duties imposed by the Republic of Korea on Japanese printing paper, United States measures on Chinese washing machines and solar panels, and Chinese retaliation against United States soybeans, complemented by a Moroccan refrigerator case - trace how export flows adjust when access to a key market is lost. Five overlapping mechanisms are identified: trade depletion, deflection to existing partners, deflection to new markets, rerouting through third countries, and production reallocation. Which mechanism dominates depends on pre-existing trade intensity, regulatory asymmetries, FDI linkages and partner absorptive capacity, and initial deflection destinations frequently attract follow-up restrictions that trigger secondary deflections. Building on these regularities, the paper derives seven testable hypotheses and outlines two ex-ante framework ideas - a decision tree suited to policy communication and an adjustment-channel map suited to econometric operationalisation - as first steps toward anticipating adjustment paths under future shocks. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/343183 Title: The underused advantages of schedules in the WTO for evolving trade dynamics and sustainable development Authors: Marceau, Gabrielle Abstract: This note concerns schedules in the WTO system. While schedules themselves are not new to World Trade Organization (WTO) experts, the central argument of this piece is that they can be further used to facilitate more effectively modern forms of differentiation-in negotiation, rule-making, and WTO reform. An important value of schedules lies in their capacity to "operationalize" sustainable development, ease regulatory cooperation, and manage diversity. The note does not aim to offer an indepth analysis, rather, it aspires to trigger discussions. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/343182 Title: The sequencing of trade facilitation reforms and its impact on trade: Evidence from the UN Global Survey on Digital and Sustainable Trade Facilitation, 2015-2025 Authors: Duval, Yann Abstract: Countries implement trade facilitation reforms sequentially, yet little is known about whether the order of implementation matters for trade. This paper provides systematic evidence, using the six rounds (2015-2025) of the UN Global Survey on Digital and Sustainable Trade Facilitation - the only global panel tracking the implementation of 38 individual measures in about 180 economies - matched to bilateral and intra-national trade flows. Three findings emerge. First, trade facilitation raises trade: in a structural gravity model with bias-corrected inference, implementation significantly increases international relative to domestic trade, with basic measures - transparency, formalities and institutional arrangements - contributing the largest share. Second, countries have converged on a common reform path: the adoption ordering revealed from the data places basic measures first and cross-border paperless trade last in virtually every country, largely independently of income. Third, timing matters: export gains from digital reforms accumulate over four to six years, and the revealed ordering shows that the digital payoff is larger where basic reforms were already in place. This points to the need for simplification before digitalisation, the sequence practitioners have long advocated. A dynamic-programming exercise over the estimated payoffs, restricted to reform configurations observed in the data, selects the same path - and shows that removing this restriction produces recommendations driven by extrapolation, a cautionary result for estimate-then-optimise policy design across the board. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/339392 Title: Bangladesh's service trade and RCEP accession Authors: Qi, Tao; Chanda, Rupa Abstract: This paper assesses Bangladesh's readiness to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) from the perspective of services trade. In Bangladesh, services exports have grown rapidly but remain narrow in scope and overshadowed by rising imports, leading to persistent deficits. RCEP countries account for a substantial share of Bangladesh's services trade. While Bangladesh demonstrates competitiveness in construction and professional services, it lags in ICT, transport, and travel services. Unlike tariffs on goods, barriers to services trade are typically regulatory or institutional in nature. Bangladesh faces regulatory gaps relative to RCEP commitments, including restrictive investment approval processes, equity caps, data localization requirements, and underdeveloped transport and tourism infrastructure. Accession could help secure reciprocal market access and offset the loss of LDC trade preferences after 2026, but will require targeted reforms to liberalize investment regimes, close regulatory gaps, and align domestic policies with RCEP commitments. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z