Our mission

We are living through a historic rupture. After thirty years of benign globalisation, international trade has become the main arena of confrontation between the great powers. The United States, China, the European Union — each deploys tariffs, subsidies and export controls as weapons in a structural competition without precedent since the Cold War.

Trade tensions are not merely tariff disputes. They are the symptom of a deep recomposition of the global economic order: fragmentation of value chains, reshoring of strategic production, the emergence of competing regional blocs, and the weaponisation of financial and technological flows.

In this context, Europe stands at a historic crossroads. It must assert a credible economic sovereignty while, where possible, preserving the trade openness that has underpinned its prosperity. This tension — between strategic autonomy and productive interdependence — is at the heart of GTPO’s work.

Faced with the complexity of these dynamics, policy-makers, economic actors and citizens need rigorous, independent and accessible analysis. This is the raison d’être of the Global Trade Policy Observatory.