“Trade policy plays a key role in the flow of goods and services both within and between countries. The former is called domestic trade while the latter is called international trade. The focus of this study will be on international trade. Countries rarely put in place policies that permit perfectly free international trade, in particular, the rules of trade that govern the movement of goods and services between countries. Instead, each country has a mixture of both restrictive trade policies and free trade policies, where a country’s dominant trade policy will be defined by the bias towards any of these two trajectories. This introductory chapter will focus on four areas of trade policy. First, the Chapter discusses the evolution of trade policy from the Mercantilist period to the present. This will set a stage for an understanding of trade policy as it is currently practiced. Second, the Chapter discusses the context of trade policy, covering issues of bilateral, regional and multilateral trade. Third, the Chapter discusses the process of trade policy formulation as it is currently practiced. This is important as it identifies the best practice policy formulation and implementation that are potentially deemed to have better results for a country’s trade-driven growth strategy. Finally, the Chapter goes on to define trade policy and come up with relevant trade policy objectives that have emerged over time.”
