Iana Dreyer: The key challenge is helping politicians understand why trade matters

Iana Dreyer reflects on lessons from history and shares her perspective on the current climate among trade policymakers around the world. With her background in journalism, she offers unique insight into how media can help build a bridge between those who make trade policy and those who analyse it.

What important challenges in EU trade policy do you think are often overlooked or misunderstood?

The key challenge is to have the general public and politicians who decide on trade policy understand why trade matters. Relatedly, there is a general challenge for vast audiences and stakeholders in trade policy to understand the virtues of international cooperation.

More recently I have been surprised at how little memory there seems to be – in the general public but also in the trade policy field in Europe – of the geopolitical dimension of trade and trade policy and how it relates to old-fashioned but fundamental issues of war and peace in this world.

Let us hope the current crisis we are witnessing under the second Trump administration will help focus minds.

As a journalist who closely follows EU trade policy, how can the media and platforms like Borderlex help explain academic research to the public?

We are a specialist publication catering to professionals in the trade policy field, so it is, in principle, easier to grab the attention of our sophisticated audience with what academics and think tankers do than it might be the case for other types of media. But the challenge remains: how to make valuable research palatable to a busy group of people who need to see very quickly how this work is relevant for them.

Good independent academic research is also vital for a healthy public debate and policy-making process. At Borderlex, we try to build a bridge between the doers and the thinkers in trade.

What are your expectations for the conference?

I appreciate the fact that this conference goes back to basics: geopolitics, war, peace, and political and economic power. It might help us think about why world powers built the system we have after the Second World War in the first place, and about how to make it suitable to this century's geopolitical realities.