On June 6 2025, the Sinergia team held their annual workshop in Geneva. This year, participation was limited to team-members only. The goal of the workshop was to discuss on-going projects, collect insights from the different disciplines and ensure coherence and alignment with the overall project goals. 

The workshop opened with an in-depth discussion of the co-authored paper on WTO Article XXVIII by the PIs (Marcelo Olarreaga, Cédric Dupont and Joost Pauwelyn). The discussion began with the idea that shifts in global market access since the WTO’s creation in 1995 have gradually eroded the original consensus. One possible approach to rebalance the initial trade commitments of 1995 is to re-arrange the tariff structure. The discussion examined whether it is meaningful to lock-in and return to the consensus of 1995. Also, given that some limitations to market access are based on common public concerns, such as climate change mitigation, it is unclear whether such measures should be subject to compensation.

Rohan Choudhary presented his work on labour market adjustment and informality in developing countries. One major difficulty in maintaining trade openness in developing countries lies in concerns about livelihoods in the informal economy. The discussion emphasised that a working unemployment insurance as well as trade unions could serve as instruments to encourage a shift from the informal to the formal sector.

Whether firms perceive non-tariff measures (NTMs) as beneficial or detrimental lies at the heart of Christian Wrinkler’s work. He found that the statements submitted by US firms in the legislative process to decide NTMs mattered: regulators do take firms' position into account. Interestingly, large firms are not necessarily always pro-globalisation, especially if they might lose their competitive advantage. The discussion focused on the challenge to deal with causality in this context and the question of welfare-enhancing protectionism.

Giovanni Donato then presented his preliminary findings on the impact of tariffs on FDI-flows. He found that during the previous US-China trade war, ASEAN countries were winners in terms of FDI. Such changes in FDI-flows were only partially linked with the re-routing of Chinese products to avoid US tariffs. A substantial share of FDI also went into new production in ASEAN countries. The discussion showed that based on the data from the first Trump presidency, it was not possible to predict with certainty whether the current US policies will lead to more re-shoring or not.

Taking a slightly different approach at the core objective to investigate ways in which trade agreements work (better) in the service of society, Charlotte Sieber-Gasser presented an analysis of the role of regulatory complexity in the underutilization of preferential tariffs. From a legal perspective, mandatory use of AI instruments to deal with regulatory complexity might be deducted from state obligations in transparency and in trade capacity building. To what extent trade secrets and distrust in governmental tools may stand in the way of the use of such instruments was one point brought up in the discussion.

In her joint work with Céline Carrère and Marcelo Olarreaga, Camille Reverdy investigates whether higher labour standards coincide with economic growth in developing countries. They find that an increase in exports in sectors with low labour standards is associated with a negative impact on trade. Developing countries should therefore focus their liberalisation efforts on exports in sectors with higher labour standards, as this promises more substantial and sustainable economic growth in the longer run. In the discussion, a number of methodological aspects were brought up – among others the best way to define sectors with low or high labour standards.

The concluding presentation was done by Noémie Laurens, who presented the critical minerals trilemma of the EU consisting of contradictory concerns for the environment, national security and economy. She showed that economic welfare tends to always be at the centre of EU policy in critical minerals, whereas particularly social aspects, such as child labour, are not prominently considered. In the discussion, it became clear that the success of the EU Green Deal depends to a large extent on access to critical minerals – and whether these minerals are produced in an environmentally friendly manner might matter less than the protection of the environment within the EU.

This very productive day concluded with an update on the databases and on other on-going projects, and with a nice drink in the Genevan evening sun.