Trade is central to the process of globalization, as both a driver of globalization and a measure of the levels of global integration. States pursue freer international trade with the underlying intention of specializing in the production of goods and services they are proficient in generating while importing other goods and services they require. This trade by comparative advantage has been shown to create economic growth (Ortiz-Ospina and Roser 2016). This principle is the impetus for globalizing trade by states; however the growth generated is not experienced evenly within states, creating winners and losers from trade.
For many globalization is indistinguishable from an increasingly interconnected world economy. For others globalization is a much more complex phenomenon with patterns of integration and fragmentation that impact upon and is evidenced across many intersecting areas of human activity from the economic, political, legal, and ecological to the cultural and.
