ARANCHA GONZALEZ

It makes perfect economic sense to integrate women in the economy in the developing world in order to catch up with advanced countries, thereby minimising socioeconomic costs as well.

You must stand up for multilateralism. You must make trade great again.

The most difficult part of Brexit will be to figure out the trade regime between the U.K. and the rest of the E.U. because the level of trade integration between the members of the E.U. is the deepest in the world and integrates regulations that govern how products and services are produced and sold within the E.U.

For Latin American countries seeking to play a bigger role in global trade, effectively implementing trade-facilitating reforms could be an important tool in their toolkits.

Improving SME productivity translates into more and better paying jobs, distributed across less fortunate sections of the economy.

Gender-based job restrictions tend to be associated with wider wage gaps and lower employment rates for women. And where girls' future earning potential is limited, families may choose to send their brothers to school instead.

Trade and investment promotion organizations are crucial partners in ITC's work to enable SMEs to internationalize. They sustain and multiply the impact of trade-related technical support and allow SMEs to function with confidence in any location.

Connecting small and medium-sized businesses to international markets can create work for host country nationals alongside refugees, building economic growth and resilience in host communities.

There are bridges that we have built not only between individual companies but also between associations. This will keep business and investments flowing.

Sometimes all it takes to connect entrepreneurs to overseas buyers is to get them into the same room.

Growth without diversification, technological improvement, and increased productivity is easily reversed: all it takes is a dip in commodity prices.

We survey companies and ask them what the barriers to export and import are. Once we map these barriers, we sit down with the companies on one side and the government and regulatory agencies on the other and help them identify obstacles to trade and what has to be done to tackle them.

Trade and investment are good for innovation - open economies allow new ideas and technologies to diffuse more quickly from wherever they are created.

In my job, as head of the International Trade Centre, I have the privilege to meet entrepreneurs from across the world almost on a daily basis.

In the ten years leading up to 2013, quinoa prices nearly tripled on the back of skyrocketing international demand for the latest 'superfood'. The grain had traditionally been cultivated in the high Andean plateau, principally for household consumption. But as prices rose, farmers' incentive to sell it as a cash crop grew.

The 'SheTrades' programme aims to connect one million women entrepreneurs to markets by 2020 with a campaign, a focussed networking app, and a range of international and national information resources.

I have seen African countries negotiate bilaterally and within the WTO. African countries come to the WTO prepared and defend their interests with vigour.

ITC works to help firms in poor countries become more competitive and overcome the barriers that are keeping their goods and services out of international markets.

Fully implementing the WTO trade facilitation agreement is one ingredient to reduce border delays and costs for traded merchandise.

Creating large numbers of decent jobs for young people is critical for achieving overall development objectives, from poverty reduction to better health and education.

What exactly is trade facilitation? In a nutshell, it is an effort to enable global trade by reducing red tape and streamline customs. In even simpler words: making it easier for companies to trade across borders.

Governments can't credibly claim to be concerned about stagnant growth and ageing workforces unless they are actively seeking to empower women economically. One way they can speed up progress towards gender-equal economic opportunity is to change laws that are holding women back.

Full social and political engagement is impossible without economic empowerment, a point that is as true for women as it is for young people of either gender.

Can trade help lift people out of poverty? It can, and it has.

When the International Trade Centre, the agency I head, works with German electronics giant Bosch to help Kenyan food processing companies boost their productivity and export competitiveness, we may well be creating future customers for Bosch washing machines.