The recent past has shown a growing interest from both trade and water experts in the relation between international trade and freshwater scarcity. Until the recent past, it has not been very common for water sector specialists to look at the relation between water use in a region and import into or export from this region. Traditionally, in their view, water demand in an area is simply a function of the amount and sort of water users in that area. At the same time, economists do generally not bother much about the implications of international trade for the water sector. The reason is that water inputs usually hardly contribute to the overall price of traded commodities. This seems to justify the conclusion that water cannot be a significant factor influencing production and trade patterns. The fact that water inputs are often heavily subsidized by national governments is hereby ignored. Trade specialists also tend to forget that external effects of water use can be very significant, but are never included in the price of water and that no country charges a scarcity rent for water inputs even though water is sometimes very scarce. When merely looking at the prices of traded commodities one will indeed get the impression that water scarcity cannot be a driving force of or limiting factor to international trade.