The PGE department congratulates our 2024 student awardees! 

First, we would like to extend our congratulations to our students who were recognized as SIS-wide Graduate Student Award winners. Calvin Elison (CRS) was presented with the Outstanding Academic Performance or Scholarly Contribution award. Mateo Maya (IER) was awarded the Outstanding Service On-Campus award. 

On May 8th, the PGE department hosted the PGE Graduation Ceremony, celebrating our department-wide student awardees.

Congratulations to our CRS Graduate Student Award Winners! 

• Outstanding Academic Performance or Scholarly Contribution: Alyssa Durnil
• Outstanding Professional or Policy Contribution - Nathaniel Schochet
• Outstanding Student Leadership - Michael Cruz 

Congratulations to our GGPS Graduate Student Award Winners! 

• Outstanding Academic Performance or Scholarly Contribution - Yuefeng Shi
• Outstanding Service On Campus - Shubhankar Agarwal and Jessica Hill 
• Outstanding Professional or Policy Contribution - Bernae DySart

• Excellence in Quantitative Research - Helen Souki Reyes

• Outstanding Student Leadership - Jared Rutherford

Congratulations to our IER and IER:QM Graduate Student Award Winners! 

• Outstanding Academic Performance or Scholarly Contribution - Caroline Arkalji 

• Outstanding Professional or Policy Contribution - Bhargav Prajapati  

• Outstanding Student Leadership - Edgar Aguilar 

Finally, congrats to this year's graduates! 

On April 10, 2024 Prof. Robert Koopman, led the Trade in the Political Crosshairs: Implications for the Western Hemisphere and Asia conference. The event brought together trade experts from various sectors.  The recurrent theme throughout the day was how businesses and governments are adapting to changing global trade flows. These changes, influenced by evolving US trade policies, the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate change, are creating both opportunities and challenges for businesses in the Western Hemisphere and Asia.

The essential message delivered was that the global trade landscape has indeed changed – the long period of continued multilateral and regional integration led by a relatively open and liberal US policy stance after WWII is now being replaced by a more nationalistic centered, Industrial Policy driven US policy environment largely focused on reducing trade with China and emphasizing near/friend/reshoring. Combined with COVID-19 pandemic supply chain disruptions and the focus on the need for greater domestic sources of medical supplies and increasing supply chain disruptions in critical global logistic routes, such as the Suez and Panama Canals, businesses are seriously rethinking their supply chain organization and government policy focus. 

During the day’s panels, stakeholders shared their perspectives:

• Industry associations and firms, both foreign and domestic, emphasized operating in a new world of increased policy uncertainty. US-China trade tensions impacted supply chain decisions, leading many firms to diversify sourcing geographically and by the number of suppliers, increasing inventories, and adopting a "China plus one" strategy.
• Businesses are pushing for transparency, clarity, and flexibility in government policies to reduce high operating uncertainty. While some firms are keen on subsidies that cut production costs, they dislike restrictions and uncertainty in input sourcing. Most prefer a focus on market access negotiations and traditional rules, viewing small deals and socially oriented rules as less economically significant.
• Logistics experts emphasized the growing challenges of managing efficient shipping flows, noting the industry's significant impact on daily life and supply chain efficiency. The container shipping industry, worth around $7 trillion annually, has seen shipping costs decrease from 75-100% to about 2% of the value of goods shipped since the advent of container shipping. This shift makes increased shipping costs and delays more critical for production and sales planning than direct costs. The industry faces additional challenges, including the need for infrastructure investments for larger ships, addressing climate change and emissions, and integrating logistics providers into supply chain management systems for greater efficiency.
• Some countries, such as Costa Rica and Mexico, have had strategic approaches to economic development and positioning in regional and global supply chains. With rapid technological change and the need for highly efficient production and low uncertainty in domestic policy, many countries will need to make significant investments in their institutions, people, and infrastructure. Having greater clarity and engagement from potential customer markets such as the US is crucial if countries in the region are to position themselves to facilitate more effective diversification of supply chains.

Keynote speakers also shared their perspectives:

• Stuart Sandlin explained the complexities of container shipping and what the industry is doing to address global crises and simultaneously build a greener future for shipping. Sandlin’s remarks helped lay the groundwork for the day as it brought in the centrality of the private sector in the trade matrix.
• Alan Wolff suggested that convergence, not co-existence, must be the guiding principle for a WTO in 2050. New agreements could include interested parties, allowing free entry and limiting vetoes. There would be a preference for binding rules over best efforts or declarations of intent. Disputes would be resolved quickly with the help of AI, and the WTO secretariat would act as a proactive executive branch, assisting members in exploring alternative paths forward and ensuring compliance with their obligations.
• Anabel Gonzalez noted that while goods trade had plateaued, services trade is growing rapidly, risks from protectionism and fragmentation need to be mitigated, and trade architecture should be shaped to support openness and predictability, She also noted that Latin American and Caribbean countries need to focus on supply-side measures such as improving infrastructure, strengthening human capital, improving access to finance, reducing high energy costs and fostering competition and improving the business environment, to take advantage of potential opportunities. 
• Padideh Ala’i charted the historical course of US trade policy, from its focus on the internal political economy with varying interests holding influence for much of its history prior to WWII, to the postwar focus on leading the establishment of global rules among a small but growing group of countries until the creation of the WTO in 1995. 

The views of policy experts on the global trading system’s current challenges shared the common theme that the world has indeed changed from the period of increased integration after WWII. There is a recognition that the world is politically fragmenting, with little convergence on a clear vision for the next steps. If governments and voters view the benefits of trade being outweighed by the risks of trade, how do you define security? What are the objectives of these new tools and how do you evaluate their outcomes? There was general agreement that the WTO was not designed to manage the “rise of China” and its political evolution, but there were differences of view as to whether the WTO was fatally flawed. Much of China’s success is due to doing things well, and ‘decoupling’ from China does provide opportunities for other developing countries to tap into markets and global value chains. There was, however, general agreement that in the current political environment the US Congress might seriously consider withdrawing Permanent Normal Trading Relations for China, subjecting it to much higher US tariffs. Which begs the question: Is a global trading system with China on the outside a more dangerous and less effective system?