Section outline

  • The short course will draw on insights from this year’s Trade and Development Report, which examines the global economic landscape of 2025. It highlights how system-wide uncertainty in trade rules, integration strategies, and geo-economic confrontations, particularly affecting developing economies, have evolved. Longer-term structural shifts and lowered growth expectations in the Global South are also explored, as external shocks, rising debt-service costs, and entrenched inequalities continue to constrain development prospects. A central theme is the trade–finance nexus: international trade—across commodities, manufactured goods, and services—is inseparable from financial mechanisms such as credit, banking, securitization, insurance, and capital markets. The report shows how monetary policy shocks and policy uncertainty feed into asset-price volatility, tighter financing conditions, and weaker investment, disproportionately affecting developing countries.