International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Trade and Environment

119 posts

CBAM enters with a BANG: the European Commission puts forth its carbon border adjustment mechanism proposal

This is a guest post by trade lawyer Victor Crochet of Van Bael & Bellis The European Commission just unveiled its proposal for a carbon border adjustment mechanism (“CBAM”) (available here). The proposal provides for a new system where importers must purchase CBAM certificates to cover direct and indirect carbon

Will the Biden Administration Add the Paris Agreement to the USMCA List of Environmental Agreements?

I've complained before about the lack of transparency in bilateral and regional trade agreements, so I appreciate the public virtual session of the Inaugural Meeting of the Environment Committee of the USMCA/CUSMA/T-MEC. And I appreciate our excellent Cato Trade Policy Center RA Alfredo Carrillo Obregon for

Is USTR Ready To Revisit Necessity Tests?

This is from remarks by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai today on issues related to trade and the environment: Even as investors take a greater interest in companies’ environmental risk exposure, the multilateral trading system has no rules to address the corporate incentive to participate in the race to

Countervailing Weak Environmental Protections

This is from a Draft Ministerial Decision submitted by the U.S. under the title "Advancing Sustainability Goals through Trade Rules to Level the Playing Field": Believing that no Member should gain a comparative advantage in trade due to insufficient or unenforced environmental laws, regulations, and standards; ... Recognizing

"Imports" of Carbon Emissions

As a political stunt, I really like this: U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09), a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee and its Subcommittee on Trade, sent a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross calling on him to initiate an investigation into the threat

The Tuna/Dolphin Appellate Body 21.5 Ruling: A decision that could threaten the integrity and efficiency of WTO dispute settlement

As Susan Esserman and I pointed out in Foreign Affairs some years back, the WTO dispute settlement system is among the most advanced adjudicative mechanisms yet devised for international law. One of its innovative features is a means by which disagreements over compliance are themselves subject to resolution by the

Trade Constitution 2.0

Both Professor Howse and Simon raised an important issue in the China-Rare Earths panel report, whose full ramifications, I believe, would go beyond this particular dispute. To me, the panel’s ostensibly nebulous position on GATT Article XX denotes hermeneutical birth pangs for the “Trade Constitution 2.0.” What I

GATT Article XX, Environmental Measures, and the SCM Agreement

Can GATT Article XX be invoked to justify emissions trading schemes that violate the SCM Agreement? This is from Ingrid Jegou and Luca Rubini in an ICTSD issues paper: Four aspects should be noted regarding the SCM Agreement. First, as noted above, this instrument is directly connected to the GATT

The Environmental Kuznets Curve and GATT Article XX

From last month's China - Exportation of Raw Materials panel report: 7.551 We now turn to analyse the second step in China's argument about the long-term benefits of export restrictions on EPR products, namely that there is a strong link between higher growth and environmental

Sea Turtles, Dolphins, Seals ... and Sharks?

Marine life has played an important role in GATT/WTO dispute settlement. Here's an argument for bringing sharks into the mix: Oceana, the largest international advocacy group working solely to protect the world’s oceans, called on the United States government today to ban the import of shark