The core of our work is advising both developed and developing country governments on how to leverage international legal and policy frameworks to promote sustainable economic growth, aligned with their development priorities. We do this through applying international legal frameworks, economic analysis and best practices to specific development challenges  faced by our clients.  We also conduct cutting-edge research on issues at the intersection of trade law, policy and development.

​

TULIP’s approach aims to address different gaps in the trade and development space:

​

• Application gap: A large number of organizations produce comprehensive research reports every year, the policy recommendations in these reports are often too general to be relevant to a developing country’s unique situation. TULIP is developing innovative, multi-disciplinary methodologies that turn existing research into pragmatic policy tools.
   

• Resources gap: Trade agreements are often high in complexity and legal jargon. This makes it difficult for non-trade specialist to understand the implications: how will adopting a certain trade provision impact competitiveness in a specific sector?  It also makes it difficult to translate different government priorities into a concrete position at the negotiating table. Developing countries typically have less resources to engage in technical assessments compared to developed countries. This can result in an unequal playing field in trade negotiations, with developed countries being better prepared than developing countries.  TULIP provides tailor-made advise to developing-country governments to help them better understand the costs and benefits of different types of legal and regulatory negotiation strategies.
   

• Coherence gap: Many governments have adopted trade policies that are unaligned with their industrial or economic strategy, and/or development goals. This is caused by the complexity of modern-day trade policies, which typically require involvement and by-in of numerous different ministries. In addition, developing countries are often member of one or numerous regional trade agreements. To derive maximum development benefits from trade, it is imperative that trade agreements are aligned at all levels. TULIP advises governments on enhancing policy coherence.