Abstract

Human being is currently dealing with a pandemic known as COVID-19, a highly contagious pandemic with unprecedented health crisis worldwide. This crisis has seriously affected communications, jobs, manufactures, commerce, consumption and human life. Affected international transport sector resulted in the disruptions of shipping, along with the new policies toward economy, travel restriction and border shutdowns, led to a dramatic increase in the trade costs. In the first quarter of 2020, this had a significant impact on global trade. This paper is utilizing an analytical methodology that aggregates, collects and categorizes relevant domestic and international reports on the COVID-19 pandemic, government policies, the degree of uncertainty of economic policies and its effect on trade costs. In the present study, we first brightly described the travel restriction measures taken by WTO members, secondly, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade costs, government pandemic response policies in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic were discussed ultimately we analyzed the effect of the significant increased trade costs on the global trade and its relevant roots. In this paper we used an integrated analysis method to collect and classify domestic and international reports on the COVID-19 pandemic through reports of WTO and the member countries.