Labour market adjustment following an increase in trade needs to be embraced as a necessary requirement for the trade agreement to benefit all its partners in the first place. Strengthening capacity building through trade agreements could contribute to reducing the negative effects of trade liberalization for labour and enable developing countries to address labour adjustment more effectively. Existing trade capacity-building measures seem to respond to challenges that arise during different stages of trade liberalization, but it is unclear to what extent «trade capacitybuilding» provisions ease pressures in labour adjustment. Based on the understanding that labour adjustment-related issues, post-trade liberalization, need to be addressed domestically through «general adjustment measures (GAMs)», such measures tend to be de-linked from trade agreements and are implemented largely on a strictly national basis. This paper examines the nature of «trade capacity-building» and of «GAMs», the effectiveness of both in labour adjustment in a developing country context and makes recommendations on how trade agreements could better address labour adjustment by combining both «trade capacity-building» provisions as well as elements of «GAMs.
Charlotte Sieber-Gasser (Sun,) studied this question.