In the context of technological competition and international trade, a country may attempt to influence a rival’s innovation efforts and use trade and innovation policies to gain at another’s expense. In a multi-country, multi-sector, dynamic model with endogenous technology accumulation through R&D innovation, we show that there is an additional incentive (beyond conventional terms of trade considerations) for Home to shift its demand for particular foreign goods and in turn affect foreign’s innovation efforts. We derive explicit expressions for optimal policies under an efficient baseline case, and general results for a wide range of specifications. In a dynamic setting, Ramsey optimal policies do not distort domestic R&D efforts if a country can commit to a schedule of trade policies, but time consistent policies employ both innovation and trade policies to implement the optimal foreign allocation, viewed from the Home country’s perspective.