Former trade ministers: Incremental approach needed to address harmful subsidies

Governments should target incremental progress in international fora to rein in trade-distorting industrial subsidies, which have become a mainstay in an international trading system increasingly focused on industrial policy, two former trade ministers said this week. “We have to try everything,” Mari Pangestu, who previously served as Indonesia’s trade minister and as a senior World Bank official, said during an April 22 event hosted by Trade Experettes in Washington, DC. “I have a word for it – constructive incrementalism. So,...