Key statistics and trends in trade policy 2022: green goods trade and trade policies

The process of deeper economic integration has remained strong at the regional and bilateral levels, with an increasing number of preferential trade and agreements (PTAs) being negotiated and implemented. Most of the recent PTAs address not only goods but also services and increasingly deal with rules beyond reciprocal tariff concessions to cover a wide range of behind the border issues. As of 2021, about half of world trade has occurred under some form of PTA. While the COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted international trade, trade under deep trade agreements has been relatively more resilient, increasing the share of trade under deep PTA further in 2021. This report is structured in two parts. The first part provides a discussion and statistics on the trade of green (environmentally friendly) goods and of some of the trade policies applied to this trade. The second part presents and discusses trends in selected trade policy instruments, including illustrative statistics. The second part is divided into four chapters: tariffs, trade agreements, non-tariff measures and trade defence measures. Trade trends and statistics are provided at various levels of aggregation illustrating the use of the trade policy measures across economic sectors and geographic regions.