Pakistan has decided to extend "most-favored nation" (MFN) trade status to India. This move has been a long time coming, and offers both countries significant benefits. The most compelling among them, however, is not economic: MFN is as much a confidence-building measure that can lower barriers to more extensive interaction between the two neighbors. Any steps that bring these two countries together are to be encouraged.
India and Pakistan granted each other MFN status when they joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1948. This framework governed their economic relations until 1965, despite bloody battles over partition and other issues.
When the World Trade Organization was launched in 1995, India re-extended MFN to Pakistan. Islamabad did not reciprocate as opponents argued that MFN status should be used for leverage in negotiations over the disputed territory of Kashmir.