The world’s economies are linked together by a complex web of trade and investment agreements. These range in scale from bilateral agreements to large multi-country free trade areas, to the World Trade Organisation.

Trade deals used to just aim to eliminate of tariffs and expand market access for companies. However, trade agreements agreed in recent years include expansive rules to protect the investments, profits, and intellectual property rights of global businesses. These rules often severely affect the freedom of countries to introduce standards and laws that may be beneficial to their people and environment.

80% of global trade happens within the value chains of multinational corporations, and these businesses exert a huge influence on trade rules. The prevailing economic system, built on the exploitation of low wages and insecure work, is created in part by trade deals which support a move towards a deregulated and liberalised global economy, placing power in the hands of corporations rather than governments, workers or communities.

This website section will feature resources and perspectives looking at the overlap between trade agreements and corporate power and asking how trade agreements can be designed to best serve the public interest and support the realisation of human rights. This covers some of the biggest issues in global trade.

• How ISDS clauses in trade agreements could undermine efforts to impose stronger human rights obligations on companies and to hold them accountable for human rights abuses
• The Energy Charter Treaty – an international agreement signed by more than 50 countries that is a major obstacle to tackling the climate crisis
• The calls for a waiver to World Trade Organisation rules on intellectual property protections to allow for the quicker and cheaper manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines