1st Editorial Board Meeting

In recent years, a growing number of governments have adopted policies aimed at supporting the transition towards a digital economy. The World Trade Report 2020 looks at these policy trends and at how trade and the WTO fit with them.
Trade and trade policies have historically been important engines for innovation. In particular, the multilateral trading system has contributed significantly to the global diffusion of innovation and technology by fostering predictable global market conditions and by underpinning the development of global value chains. As data become an essential input in the digital economy, firms rely more on intangible assets than on physical ones, and digital firms are able to reach global markets faster without the amount of physical investment previously necessary in other sectors. Success in the digital economy will depend on openness, access to information and communication technology (ICT) goods and services, collaboration on research projects, and the diffusion of knowledge and new technology.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the prospect of increasingly frequent and more intense natural and man-made disasters raise important questions about the resilience of the global economy to such shocks. The 2021 edition of the WTO's World Trade Report examines why the interconnected global trading system is both vulnerable and resilient to crises, how it can help countries to be more economically resilient to shocks, and what can be done to make the system better prepared and more resilient in the future.

Climate change is having a profound impact on people’s lives across the world. Mitigating and adapting to climate change will require major economic investment and coordinated action to transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy. The 2022 World Trade Report explores the complex interlinkages between climate change and international trade and how international trade and trade rules can contribute to addressing climate change.

Trying to force adoption of clean energy with subsidies, regulations, and exhortations will fail. The only realistic way to spur the green transition is to develop clean technologies that can reach effective price and performance parity with dirty ones. Then markets will adopt them at scale.

AI has permeated our lives incrementally, through everything from the tech powering our smartphones to autonomous-driving features on cars to the tools retailers use to surprise and delight consumers. As a result, its progress has been almost imperceptible. Clear milestones, such as when AlphaGo, an AI-based program developed by DeepMind, defeated a world champion Go player in 2016, were celebrated but then quickly faded from the public’s consciousness.
Generative AI applications such as ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Stable Diffusion, and others have captured the imagination of people around the world in a way AlphaGo did not, thanks to their broad utility—almost anyone can use them to communicate and create—and preternatural ability to have a conversation with a user. The latest generative AI applications can perform a range of routine tasks, such as the reorganization and classification of data. But it is their ability to write text, compose music, and create digital art that has garnered headlines and persuaded consumers and households to experiment on their own. As a result, a broader set of stakeholders are grappling with generative AI’s impact on business and society but without much context to help them make sense of it.

This independent report on the future cooperation between Finland and Estonia was drafted by the rapporteurs, ex-ministers Anne-Mari Virolainen and Jaak Aaviksoo, supported by the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute. It was commissioned by the Finnish and Estonian governments. The report analyses the current state of the bilateral relations and gives recommendations on how to develop the Finnish-Estonian cooperation in the future.

Spurred by the splashy emergence of generative artificial intelligence and an array of other AI applications, experts participating in a new Pew Research Center canvassing have great expectations for digital advances across many aspects of life by 2035. They anticipate striking improvements in health care and education. They foresee a world in which wonder drugs are conceived and enabled in digital spaces; where personalized medical care gives patients precisely what they need when they need it; where people wear smart eyewear and earbuds that keep them connected to the people, things and information around them; where AI systems can nudge discourse into productive and fact-based conversations; and where progress will be made in environmental sustainability, climate action and pollution prevention