Countries Do Not Trade, Firms Do: Rethinking Global Trade

Countries Do Not Trade, Firms Do offers a firm-centered reinterpretation of globalization and international trade. It challenges the conventional view of trade as an exchange between nations, showing instead that governments set the rules and infrastructures, but firms make the critical decisions—where to source, which suppliers to trust, how to organize production, which routes to use, and how to respond to disruption.The book revisits the history of trade governance, the evolution of trade theory, and the limits of country-centered models before introducing the ACT—gravity framework, which explains trade as the outcome of firm level search, asymmetric capabilities, governance choices, and feasibility constraints. Subsequent chapters extend this analysis to global production networks, logistics, resilience, complexity, geospatial trade, and policy.By uncovering how national trade statistics conceal firm heterogeneity, value chain governance, logistics corridors, infrastructure chokepoints, regional capability clusters, and systemic risk, the book demonstrates that countries remain vital—not as the actors that trade, but as the architects and governors of the environments in which firms search, coordinate, invest, adapt, and exchange. Understanding that division of roles is essential to designing trade policy that is more productive, inclusive, and resilient.