Pigs and World Trade
11 May 2023
The decision by the US Supreme Court today in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross has profound implications for international trade. By validating the constitutionality of PPM-based domestic trade restrictions on what belongs in California stores, the Court has prioritized local government regulations over the burdens that such regulations place on out of territory producers.
Back in 2020, I called attention to six growing threats to international trade, one of them being "the morality of trade between countries whose legal systems manifest different attitudes about human dignity." I missed the opportunity to address attitudes toward the dignity of pigs, but I discussed the general problem of whether identifiable traded goods are produced in an “odious” way. See https://charnovitz.org/publications/Solving_the_Challenges-PDF.11.17.21.pdf.
The California measure provides a template for greater governmental control over consumer choice.
The extent to which a subnational trade restriction is legal under the US Constitution is a different matter than whether a trade restriction is legal under international trade law. I have not seen an analysis of whether the California measure would be consistent with the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and I have not done one given how little respect the US government gives to WTO rules.
