International trade does not seem to be high on the economic agenda of the new president of the United States.

Soon it will be. The World Bank recently forecast that world trade will shrink by about 2% in 2009 -- the first such contraction since 1982.

As president of the world's leading trading nation, Barack Obama will have no choice but to address trade.

When he does, he will discover that many of the questions he will face on trade as president will not be those he was asked about in his campaign.

Here are just a few of the many questions President Obama will need to answer.

• The U.S. is busy printing money to pay for bailouts of struggling industries. The auto industry has already received a down payment on a bailout. Other industries are lining up. What the U.S. calls bailouts are, under World Trade Organization rules, called subsidies. Illegal subsidies are subject to countervailing duties and other trade sanctions. Will subsidies provided to U.S. auto or other industries be consistent with WTO rules?
  
• While the world strives, belatedly, to conclude a new global agreement on climate change, congressional Democrats will wish to move forward quickly with national climate change legislation. Any such national measures by the U.S. will surely be challenged in the WTO. How can the measures on climate change contemplated by Congress be shaped to be consistent with WTO rules?
  
• Congressional Democrats are eager to bring a complaint against China in the WTO for currency manipulation. Without doubt, Chinese currency manipulation has been harming U.S. trade. But do Chinese exchange actions meet the WTO legal test in that they "frustrate" the intent of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade? If so, can the U.S. prove it? And could the exchange actions of the U.S. later withstand the same scrutiny in the WTO?
  
• Many Democrats are determined to include labor and environmental standards in all international trade agreements. Worker rights and environmental resources are certainly deserving of international protection. But is the U.S. willing to be judged by the same labor and environmental standards it would establish for others?
  
• Obama is committed to a review of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. After he concludes that he does not really want to retreat from Nafta, how will he then be able to persuade the American people of the national need to advance Nafta toward further regional economic integration to meet the challenge of Chinese and other global competition?
  
• The U.S. has spent much of this decade concluding bilateral free trade agreements, while the multilateral Doha Development Round of WTO negotiations has stalled. Free trade agreements among WTO members are permitted under the GATT as an exception to the WTO's most-favored-nation rule of nondiscrimination. Is the U.S. prepared with a defense if some WTO member claims in WTO dispute settlement that one of these FTAs -- such as, say, the Nafta -- is not eligible for this exception?
  
• Congress recently passed a farm bill that increases trade-distorting agricultural subsidies. Developing countries with a comparative advantage in agricultural trade seek significant cuts in agricultural subsidies from both the U.S. and the European Union in the Doha negotiations. Without offering such cuts, how will the U.S. secure concessions from developing countries in manufacturing and other sectors vital to American competitiveness?
  
• Developing countries are hoping that, somehow, a successful conclusion to the multilateral trade negotiations will resolve their agricultural disputes with the U.S. If Doha fails, the U.S. is likely to face a series of new WTO cases challenging its entire agricultural subsidy regime. Is the U.S. ready to defend -- and to win -- WTO cases on cotton, rice and perhaps other U.S. farm products?
  
• The rest of the world is waiting for Obama to decide whether the U.S. will make a serious effort to conclude the Doha Development Round successfully. As important as it is, Doha reflects a traditional 20th-century trade agenda -- largely limited to tariff cuts and conventional market access. If the U.S. is unwilling to spend the political capital needed to conclude Doha, then what hope is there that the WTO-based trading system can go on from Doha to address a 21st-century trade agenda -- including high technology, technical standards, intellectual property, Internet commerce, investment, labor, environment, energy, financial regulation, currency exchange rates and much more?

James Bacchus is a former Democratic member of the U.S. Congress from Florida, a former chairman of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization and the author of the book "Trade and Freedom." He practices law in Washington.