Fair Trade and the Multilateral Trading System

The OECD Secretariat has prepared this note on "Fair Trade" as a contribution to discussion of trade-related issues of current interest that fall outside the Trade Committee’s normal work programme. The goals of this paper are twofold. First, the paper is meant as a foundation for better understanding the Fair Trade movement — who its actors are, how it works, and how widespread it is — all of which have a bearing on the extent to which policy makers should pay attention to it. Second, it seeks to identify trade and other policy issues and raise some questions for discussion.