How We Got Here
What the Postwar Trade System Was Designed to Do
The rules governing world trade were written by people with a specific and recent memory of what happens when trade collapses.
How We Got Here
The decades of policy and industrial change behind the current arrangement.
12 articles · updated August 11, 2026
How We Got Here
Comparative Advantage: The Idea and What It Never Claimed
The oldest argument in trade economics is also the most frequently misquoted. What it actually says is narrower and more interesting than the version usually repeated.
More in How We Got Here
How We Got Here
When Tariffs Fell and Everything Else Grew
Decades of negotiation reduced duties across industrial goods. The restrictions that mattered then moved into forms that…
How We Got Here
The Unbundling: How Production Came Apart
For most of industrial history, making a thing happened in one place. The reasons it stopped happening that way are specific and…
How We Got Here
Bretton Woods and the Money Behind the Goods
Trade needs a way to settle payments across currencies. The monetary arrangements built after the war shaped commerce as much as…
How We Got Here
Two Development Strategies and What Each Assumed
Countries seeking to industrialise have broadly chosen between building for the home market and building for export. Each rests on…
How We Got Here
Why Bilateral Trade Balances Overstate What They Measure
The figure counting exports between two countries records the full value of goods that several countries helped to make.
How We Got Here
How Quotas Decided Where Clothes Were Made
For decades, textile and clothing trade ran under a quota system rather than ordinary rules. Its removal rearranged an entire…
How We Got Here
Deindustrialisation: What Actually Moved and What Did Not
Manufacturing employment fell in many wealthy economies while manufacturing output did not. Untangling the two explains most of the…
How We Got Here
The Standards That Made Interchangeable Parts Possible
Before a bolt from one country could fit a machine from another, somebody had to agree what the thread meant. That agreement is…
How We Got Here
How Industrial Capability Migrates Between Countries
Industries have moved from country to country in a recognisable sequence for two centuries. The pattern is gradual and the reasons…
How We Got Here
Why Trade Grew Faster Than Output for Decades
For a long period, world trade expanded more quickly than world production. Part of that was real and part was an artefact of how…