Trade Bargaining Dataset

Project Overview

The Trade Bargaining Dataset (TBD) captures the life cycle of preferential trade agreement (PTA) negotiations. While most existing trade-agreement datasets focus on concluded treaties, the TBD tracks trade cooperation from the early exploration and launch of negotiations through bargaining, signature, enforcement, and alternative outcomes, such as ongoing or discontinued negotiations.

The project is motivated by a simple observation: Not every trade negotiation produces an agreement.

 Studying only signed PTAs leaves important questions unanswered about which states choose to negotiate, why some talks succeed while others stall or fail, and how interstate relations develop during commercial bargaining.

Trade cooperation is a bargaining process, not only a treaty outcome. 

Why Study Trade Negotiations?

Existing datasets have generated important insights into PTA formation, treaty design, ratification, and the effects of trade agreements. Yet they generally observe trade cooperation only once governments have signed an agreement.

The TBD makes it possible to observe earlier stages of commercial cooperation: whether states explore a potential agreement, launch negotiations, sustain bargaining, reach signature, or discontinue talks.

This distinction matters because the decision to pursue trade cooperation is not the same as the ability to conclude and implement an agreement.

Current Scope

Covering 1980–2025, the TBD tracks more than 600 trade-negotiation cases involving 107 countries across the Indo-Pacific, the Americas, Europe (including the Balkans and Eastern Europe), and Central Asia, as well as their negotiating partners. 

The animated map below illustrates how active trade bargaining has expanded and shifted across countries and regions over time. Darker shading indicates that a country is involved in a larger number of active trade negotiations in a given year. (Note: Gray areas are not currently covered by the TBD and should not be interpreted as having no trade negotiations.)

The dataset is under active development. Geographic coverage and historical case information continue to expand.