In this paper, a new approach is presented for solving multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) problems, which is based on new arithmetic operations and the ranking rules of trapezoidal interval type-2 fuzzy numbers (IT2FNs). Firstly, the shortcomings of some existing arithmetic operations of trapezoidal IT2FNs are discussed along with their ranking methods, before some new arithmetic operations and ranking rules are proposed. Secondly, some new aggregation operators including the arithmetic averaging aggregation operator, the ordered weighted averaging aggregation operator and the hybrid...