Current Trade Knowledge Network members are located in eight countries: Argentina, Bangladesh, China, Chile, Costa Rica, Pakistan, South Africa and Vietnam. These partners focus on building stronger networks at the national level, and creating a lasting presence on the issues of trade and sustainable development.

The countries were selected on the basis of the following criteria (note that not all criteria were necessarily fulfilled in each case—an implicit aggregate scoring procedure was used):

• broad regional representation in the final mix;
• existing capacity for solid research, but a need for additional capacity on the issues of trade and sustainable development;
• the likelihood of a receptive audience for the project's work among policy-makers, business, research institutes and NGOs; and
• the country's potential influence in the multilateral trading system and in international environmental negotiations.

In each country, the network members prepared and submitted a proposal for research in two or three areas of national topical interest. These proposals were reviewed by the project team and the other network members. The Trade Knowledge Network seeks opportunities to further expand TKN's work through collaborative relationships with research and capacity building organizations dedicated to linking trade policy and practice with positive sustainable development in their country.