In a recent talk at a European Community Studies Association conference in Salzburg on CETA, TTIP and TISA, Lorand Bartels said something along these lines (sorry, no link, but Lorand assures me he said it!):
Trade is not the most important value and the GATT exceptions say that other values are more important than trade.
That sounds right, but I think it may need to be elaborated a bit. In particular, what do we mean by "trade" or "trade as a value"? Trade is not a value all by itself, I don't think, otherwise export subsidies would be encouraged by trade rules, when in fact they are generally prohibited. Our goal here is not to have goods and services traded entirely internationally, with the idea that more trade is always better.
I can think of several possibilities for what trade as a value might mean in this context; there may be more.
First, when you talk about the benefits of trade, you might mean that you are aiming to reduce or eliminate protectionism.
You might go further, though, and have in mind a single market, where if you can sell your goods and services in your own market, you can sell them in foreign markets too.
Or perhaps you have in mind some kind of "right" to trade, where individual traders are able to sell in whatever market they like.
Are there others? Probably, although many are likely to be variations on the above.
With each, "trade" as a value is balanced against other values in different ways. One might argue that protectionism is pre-balanced, in the sense that it does not interfere with other values. By contrast, if you are going to try to set up a single market, or articulate a right to trade, you need to establish how other values are to be taken into account.
So yes, trade is not a value that takes precedence over all other values, and the way we balance different values needs to be thought through carefully.
