Over at Eyes on Trade, Todd Tucker had this to say in reaction to the Brazil - Tyres decision:
No one would say that Brazil's enviro policy was the perfect solution to the problem. But many, many environmental policies are that imperfect. Perhaps due to other influences in the legislature or elsewhere, you can't get a full ban on all kinds of tires from all countries. Perhaps an environmental measure won't solve the environmental problem, but it can make a contribution to solving the problem, or serve as an initial step towards mobilizing a constituency for systematic reform.
Here's my concern with this view. If you allow "other influences" to put discrimination among countries into domestic laws, you open the door for domestic industry to turn a wide range of domestic laws across many policy areas into vehicles for protectionism.
