The Remaking Global Trade for a Sustainable Future Project aims to rethink the foundations for international commerce and develop a WTO reform agenda to better position this critical international organization to meet the needs of the current moment and better align the trading system with the world community’s commitment to a sustainable future. The Project will map out where the world needs to go over the next decade to address economic inequality, achieve the transition to a clean energy future, and advance other dimensions of the sustainable development vision – and specify what the trading system’s role should be in promoting the transformation required. It will also explore the reasons that the trade regime has come under political attack and how the WTO’s direction, structure, and rules might be reconfigured to respond. It will further identify other entities, institutions, and international organizations with which those in the trade world should work to deliver the requisite reforms  – as well as champions who can lead this effort both inside and outside the trading system.

Led by Professor Dan Esty at the Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School, Professor Diana Van Patten at the Yale School of Management, Professor Joel Trachtman and Dean Rachel Kyte at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and Jan Yves Remy, Director of the University of the West Indies International Trade Law, Policy, and Services in Barbados, the Remaking Trade Project will also engage with thought leaders across the world in an effort to re-think the intellectual logic and economic underpinnings of global trade with an eye toward broadening public understanding and political support around the world for a re-geared structure of trade and improved global governance as critical elements of an environmentally secure, prosperous, equitable, and peaceful world.