Enabling Trade: From Valuation to Action

The report argues that reducing supply chain barriers is more effective for global GDP growth than simple tariff elimination. It provides a framework for implementation through four lenses: agriculture (reducing food loss), the automotive industry (harmonizing standards and duty drawbacks), the Pacific Alliance (deepening regional integration), and border management (transitioning to 'smart borders' via digitization). Key findings emphasize that public-private collaboration is essential to reach 'tipping points' of profitability that trigger virtuous cycles of investment.

• Reducing a limited set of supply chain barriers halfway to global best practice could increase global GDP by nearly 5%, with higher proportional benefits for emerging nations in Africa (12%) and South and Central Asia (8%).
• Agricultural supply chains are highly vulnerable to delays; for cereals, each day of delay from harvest to market is equivalent to a 0.8% tariff.
• Global food loss and waste are significant, with 30% of produced food lost before consumption, contributing to 14% of world greenhouse gas emissions and 20% of freshwater consumption.
• In developing countries, 94% of food loss occurs at pre-consumer stages (harvesting through distribution), whereas in North America and Europe, 40% occurs at the household level.
• Differences in regulatory and safety standards between the US and EU create an annual cost of US$ 3 billion to 6 billion for EU car exports to the US, acting as a tariff of 10-20%.
• The Pacific Alliance (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) has eliminated 90% of tariffs, but non-tariff barriers like land infrastructure and paperwork processing times remain major obstacles.
• Digitization of border management, such as the implementation of e-customs in Thailand, can significantly reduce export times; Thailand's time to export decreased from 24 to 14 days.
• South Korea's UNI-PASS system demonstrates the efficiency of 'smart borders,' reducing import clearance to approximately 1.5 hours and export clearance to 1.5 minutes.
• In Nigeria's cassava value chain, food loss is lower in the high-quality cassava flour (HQCF) chain (about 21%) than in the traditional chain (about 36%).

APA

World Economic Forum (2014). Enabling Trade: From Valuation to Action. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_EnablingTradeReport_2014.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Enabling Trade: From Valuation to Action. 2014. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_EnablingTradeReport_2014.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Enabling Trade: From Valuation to Action |date=January 2014 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_EnablingTradeReport_2014.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2014enabling, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Enabling Trade: From Valuation to Action}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2014}, month = jan, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_EnablingTradeReport_2014.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }