Professor Nicolas Lamp helps decode today’s shifting trade landscape — and with a new program, offers lawyers and business leaders insights into the new tariff era.

Few issues have gotten as much front-page ink lately as trade. And not just because of Donald Trump’s tariffs. Globalization has been under attack for more than a decade, with many asking if free trade was ever as good as promised.

Professor Nicolas Lamp, an expert in international trade, has watched arguments over tariffs, free trade and global supply chains shift from quiet policy talks to front-page fights.

“There have been a lot of unproductive debates in which one side simply rejected out of hand what the other side was saying,” he says.

That hardening of views became clear in recent years. Brexit exposed frustrations in the U.K. over the free flow of goods across Europe. In the U.S., Donald Trump twice won the presidency by convincing voters they’d be better off if trade agreements were scrapped and manufacturing brought back to America.

Globalization’s supporters counter liberal trade policies have created enormous wealth around the world and lifted millions out of poverty.

Lamp has brought clarity to those conversations. His 2021 book, Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why it Matters (Harvard University Press), co-authored with Australian National University professor Anthea Roberts, presented six competing narratives, from establishment defenders of free trade to left- and right-wing opponents, letting each side make its case.

The goal, Lamp says, was balance. “Globalization is complex, and in each of these narratives we found some truth … If you stick to just one narrative and try to win the arguments against everyone else, that’s not a productive approach. And as a policymaker, it’s a dangerous approach.”

The book struck a chord. Fortune and the Financial Times both named it one of the year’s best and it’s used in classrooms to teach students about the complexity of globalization and trade.

It’s an example of how Lamp is elevating the conversation about globalization.

As academic co-director of Queen’s International Law Program and director of its International Business Law stream, Lamp helps prepare the next generation of trade lawyers. As director of the university’s Institute on Trade Policy, he keeps government officials informed on emerging issues. And through his research, he looks for new ways to understand how globalization shapes — and shakes up — the world.

“We’re moving from a period in which countries tried to trade with everyone else to one where they’re becoming a lot more strategic,” he says.

As a globalization researcher, it’s fitting that Lamp grew up in Hamburg, Germany, home to one of Europe’s busiest ports. Yet it was a year spent on a high school exchange in Brazil, where he saw poverty and harsh factory conditions as the country attempted to industrialize — in contrast to Germany’s prosperity — that pushed him to study how the global economy really functions.

That curiosity led him to study international relations, earn master’s and doctoral law degrees and work at the epicentre of globalization: the World Trade Organization in Geneva.

Lamp joined Queen’s in 2014. His research focuses on the competing points of view around economic globalization and implications for trade law and policy.

That work is crucial today. The era of broad free trade that began in the 1990s is ending. Now, countries are shifting to what Lamp calls “multipurpose trade policies.”

“There’s a move away from the idea that globalization is good and everyone’s going to win in the end,” he says. “Industrial policy is making a comeback. Countries are saying: We have critical industries we need to protect and certain capabilities that we require.” One example was the Biden administration’s CHIPS Act, which aimed to bring semiconductor development and manufacturing back to the U.S.

But these shifts also bring tough choices. Canada matched America’s 100-per-cent duties on Chinese electric vehicles. But then the U.S. slapped tariffs on Canadian cars, anyway, while China hit back with tariffs on Canadian canola.

“At some point, the Canadian government has to start rethinking the landscape and taking into account our interests,” he says. “We want to get a trade deal with the U.S., but Trump has made it clear he doesn’t want Canadian products.”

To help guide governments, Lamp is leading a SSHRC-funded research project called “Trading in (Dis)Order: The Crisis of Globalization and the Future of International Trade Law and Policy.” It will track shifts in trade policy over recent years with the aim of building a framework for governments, businesses and academics. The goal: to better diagnose changes, respond with effective strategies and predict the legal impacts of shifting trade policies.

He also oversees two key international trade programs at Queen’s.

The first, the International Law Program, offers a unique path for law students to launch global careers. It offers three streams: International Business Law, International Environmental Law and Public International Law. The eight-week program runs every May to July, and next year returns to Queen’s Bader College at Herstmonceux Castle in England, plus visits to law firms in Europe, and headquarters of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris and the WTO in Geneva.

As Lamp notes, “If you go to a Canadian law school and you want to be a lawyer on Bay Street, there’s a very clear path for you to follow.” With international law, not so much. But through the Queen’s International Law Program “students get to interact with the people already working in the field they want to pursue,” he says.

He also leads the Queen’s Institute on Trade Policy, the country’s top training course for trade officials at Global Affairs Canada, and federal and provincial government departments, held every April. Lamp has been director since 2019, and this year more than 60 officials gathered in Kingston to hear from experts on topics ranging from agricultural supply chains to U.S. protectionism.

Lamp especially looks forward to the event each year because it directly connects him with policymakers. “I learn as much from them as, hopefully, they take away from us,” he says.

More recently, Lamp launched a new professional program: “Trade Law Essentials: What Businesses Need to Know.” It will provide lawyers and businesspeople with key insights into tariffs and international trade law. The online program runs Dec. 8-10, 9 am to 5 pm.  For more information and to register, please visit the Professional Intensives webpage. 

By Robert Gerlsbeck