As countries move to achieve net-zero targets there is a risk their industries will relocate to c... more As countries move to achieve net-zero targets there is a risk their industries will relocate to countries where emitting CO2 is cheaper and easier. • An option for addressing this so-called carbon leakage is applying domestic carbon prices to imported products, or Carbon Border Adjustment (CBA). Both the UK and US are considering CBA and the EU has committed to introducing it. • It's still unclear how exactly CBA will be designed and the EU Commission will publish a proposal in July. • CBA design offers up a trilemma between the policy goals of environmental ambition, technical feasibility and fairness. • This trilemma means that there is no optimal solution for CBA design, but rather trade-offs between goals. • CBA also gives rise to the need for new forms of trade and climate cooperation to determine which other countries or producers have equivalent pricing, and therefore should be exempted. This might mean simply agreeing broad shared aims, such as net-zero targets, or much more detailed sector-specific analysis. • The upcoming G7 and COP , both hosted by the UK, provide an opportunity to make progress on these crucial questions for designing CBA and forming a larger transatlantic climate alliance.
This article examines a significant question in navigating trade and climate tension: how to reco... more This article examines a significant question in navigating trade and climate tension: how to recognize another country as having equivalent climate regulations. Such equivalence forms a core component of many proposed models of so-called climate clubs. Establishing equivalence between distinct national climate regulation regimes poses a unique challenge that draws upon both trade and environmental international cooperation. Drawing on existing proposals, I examine prospects for country-based cooperation through three models: ETS-linking, benchmarking of shared methods and minimum standards, and benchmarking of outcome duties. The analysis concludes that all models necessitate some trade-offs between the goals of rigorous oversight of climate objectives, inclusivity, and WTO compliance. Benchmarking of shared methods and minimum standards seems most feasible, and would provide a deeper level of integration between trade and climate cooperation, but necessitates a shift in how countri...
Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, create... more Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, created in 1992 and currently directed by Professor Erik Jones, aims to develop inter-disciplinary and comparative research on the major issues facing the process of European integration, European societies and Europe's place in 21st century global politics. The Centre is home to a large post-doctoral programme and hosts major research programmes, projects and data sets, in addition to a range of working groups and ad hoc initiatives. The research agenda is organised around a set of core themes and is continuously evolving, reflecting the changing agenda of European integration, the expanding membership of the European Union, developments in Europe's neighbourhood and the wider world.
This Briefing Paper is one of a pair of papers that looks at the strategic choice to accede to CP... more This Briefing Paper is one of a pair of papers that looks at the strategic choice to accede to CPTPP as part of a larger symbolic move away from the EU and its regulatory model. This paper considers CPTPP and UK agri-food regulation. Briefing Paper 61 examines the impact of CPTPP on UK digital trade. • Acceding to CPTPP underscores that the UK needs to decide – and defend – its approach to agri-food standards domestically. • Signing up to particular regulatory principles in any given FTA (in this case the CPTPP) may constrain domestic policy, and also what the UK can subsequently agree to with other partners in future FTAs. • Failing to adequately understand or anticipate the interests of CPTPP Parties could prove detrimental to upholding the UK’s strategic objectives, including maintaining current levels of protection in food standards and safety. • Current levels of protection in food standards and safety could be undermined through increased pressure on UK regulators and also ind...
As countries move to achieve net-zero targets there is a risk their industries will relocate to c... more As countries move to achieve net-zero targets there is a risk their industries will relocate to countries where emitting CO2 is cheaper and easier. • An option for addressing this so-called carbon leakage is applying domestic carbon prices to imported products, or Carbon Border Adjustment (CBA). Both the UK and US are considering CBA and the EU has committed to introducing it. • It's still unclear how exactly CBA will be designed and the EU Commission will publish a proposal in July. • CBA design offers up a trilemma between the policy goals of environmental ambition, technical feasibility and fairness. • This trilemma means that there is no optimal solution for CBA design, but rather trade-offs between goals. • CBA also gives rise to the need for new forms of trade and climate cooperation to determine which other countries or producers have equivalent pricing, and therefore should be exempted. This might mean simply agreeing broad shared aims, such as net-zero targets, or much more detailed sector-specific analysis. • The upcoming G7 and COP , both hosted by the UK, provide an opportunity to make progress on these crucial questions for designing CBA and forming a larger transatlantic climate alliance.
Relevant WTO treaties state that trade liberalization and environmental protection are ‘mutually ... more Relevant WTO treaties state that trade liberalization and environmental protection are ‘mutually supportive’. Yet negotiations reveal more contentious discourses: that environmental regulation comprises ‘green protectionism’, or that environmental protection is a ‘non-trade’ issue. Mutual supportiveness does not contradict, but rather encompasses, these divisions. It maintains positive ambiguity: an assertion that there is no conflict between economic development and environmental protection, and also an aspiration yet to be achieved. While it implies a duty to seek good faith solutions in event of conflicts of laws or norms, it does not proscribe any precise obligation. Thus it circumscribes the WTO’s environmental ambitions.
When establishing whether a disputed regulation is protectionist under the WTO National Treatment... more When establishing whether a disputed regulation is protectionist under the WTO National Treatment Principle, there are two key elements: its effect on the market for competitive products, and its intent or policy rationale. Yet the Appellate Body has formally rejected both elements, and in the surprising 2014 outcome ofEC–Seal Products, under the key provision GATT Article III(4), the latter was simply denied. This obfuscation leads to implicit and explicit conflation of these elements. In some disputes, qualitative findings about the existence and nature of competitive relationships are presented using the language of quantitative market analysis. In others, compelling policy objectives shape the outcome of a supposedly market-based analysis. This article proposes an approach that synthesizes two strands of scholarship, advocating more rigorous use of market-based evidence and stronger analysis of policy rationale. Separating these elements will achieve the appropriate balance betw...
The WTO Secretariat describes sustainable development as a central WTO principle. Relevant intern... more The WTO Secretariat describes sustainable development as a central WTO principle. Relevant international law treaties have declared sustainable development's mutual supportiveness with trade liberalization, and also emphasized the need to balance its ‘pillars’: economic development, often equated with trade liberalization, with environmental conservation and social welfare. While ‘mutual supportiveness’ suggests that sustainable development's environmental and social goals are a side effect of trade liberalization, ‘balancing’ involves weighing these different goals, and prompts the difficult question of which are most important, and who is empowered to decide. This paper traces these two broad theoretical conceptions through WTO legal texts, negotiations and dispute settlement, arguing that they have important pragmatic implications. In particular, to create mutual supportiveness WTO Director-General, Pascal Lamy, has stated the need for adequate domestic policies, suggesti...
Should consumers' preference for ‘green’ products help justify, from a WTO perspective, emerg... more Should consumers' preference for ‘green’ products help justify, from a WTO perspective, emerging regulations such as restrictions on trade in non-sustainable biofuels? Despite the role consumer preferences have played in WTO disputes, in association with the ‘like’ products concept, there has not been enough focused examination of their specific influence, particularly in disputes on ethical public policy issues, such as environmental or health regulations. To this end, this paper examines key GATT Article III disputes, pointing out that they included attempts both to measure, and also to interpret, consumer preferences. The latter approach becomes more tempting when consumer preferences are difficult to measure; import bans or restrictions associated with ethical public policy regulations can bring about such a situation. A hypothetical dispute about EC biofuels sustainability criteria demonstrates this problem. Options to make the concept of consumer preferences more coherent ...
Recent European Union sustainability criteria for biofuels provide an opportunity to understand m... more Recent European Union sustainability criteria for biofuels provide an opportunity to understand more precisely the relationship between national sustainable development policies and World Trade Organization (WTO) law. A desire to avoid WTO conflict was one reason for the omission of stronger criteria addressing negative social and environmental impacts of increased biofuels production. Thus, despite declarations of sustainable development's central importance
since tariff concessions and services commitments need not apply to all products and all sectors ... more since tariff concessions and services commitments need not apply to all products and all sectors and may be renegotiated at any time, WTO law is sufficiently flexible to permit each Member to adjust the scope of its commitments to open its market to foreign products and services to its policy constraints. I would like to recommend to anyone skeptical about this conclusion to take the trouble to examine the factual details of a cross-section of the cases decided by the Appellate Body. In the overwhelming majority of the cases, the measures declared to be illegal by the Appellate Body were the result of regulatory capture and its ruling facilitated the correction of a government failure in the domestic political process. Most of the cases demonstrate that Robert E. Hudec was right when he said that ‘protectionism tends to be traded between legislators as though it were a free good’.18 In general, the Appellate Body’s ruling made the regulatory capture and the costs it entailed more visible and the legislators, when implementing the ruling, could take a decision on the matter that was more informed and took into account a wider range of interests than the measure found to be inconsistent with WTO law. Moreover, in most cases, the implementation of the ruling tended to redistribute economic benefits acquired by a small but politically powerful group to the public at large. Democracy? Redistribution? I believe that anyone concerned about these matters has good reasons to welcome the corrective influence of the Appellate Body’s jurisprudence. For these reasons, I believe that the constraints of WTO law on democratic decision making and redistributive policies, and the ideas that the ‘trio of Hayekian’s at the GATT’ developed in the 1970s and 1980s on these matters, are not what Slobodian claims them to be in the final chapter of his book. Slobodian does not merely present in this chapter the perceptions that the demonstrators in Seattle had of the world economic order. He engages in an evaluation of the impact and problems of an institution without, however, examining the law, the jurisprudence, the methods of operation, or the powers of that institution. Had he done so, he would have discovered some of the misconceptions about the WTO that prompted his acquaintances to go to Seattle and would have enabled them to choose the target of their protests more wisely in the future. Instead, he propagates those misconceptions, which is an unhelpful ending to an otherwise excellent book.
• Post-Brexit food standards governance requires piecing together three new processes with very d... more • Post-Brexit food standards governance requires piecing together three new processes with very different-even opposite-implications. o Retained EU law gives devolved nations independent control over domestic food standards and allows ministers to make new rules in these areas. o Common frameworks aim to create harmonised food standards across the UK. o The Internal Market Bill (IM Bill) makes it very difficult for devolved nations to restrict or impede imports from other devolved nations. • Putting these pieces together provides a picture that is unfavourable to the regulatory and political autonomy of Scotland and Wales. • The IM Bill's market access requirements could override agreed harmonised standards set out in common frameworks, which are cooperative and consultative rather than legislative. • The IM Bill also undermines permitted devolution as England's larger size and market power may make it difficult for devolved nations to maintain different regulations. Key IM Bill requirements also apply to imported goods, suggesting that devolved nations would not be able to ban or restrict products admitted as a result of new Free Trade Agreements.
• To become a world leader in trade and climate policy the UK needs to develop an integrated stra... more • To become a world leader in trade and climate policy the UK needs to develop an integrated strategy that enhances areas of mutual supportiveness and addresses areas of potential conflict. Enhancing mutual supportiveness: • UK climate legislation does not currently include trade-related emissions. Factoring in aviation and shipping would help to address this problem. • The UK's approach to integrating climate into its new free trade agreements (FTAs), as well as its 'continuity agreements' with former EU FTA trade partners, is inconsistent. Notably, continuity agreements are a lost opportunity to update existing trade agreements in order to reflect the net-zero emissions by 2050 target. • Subsidies for fossil fuels should be transparent and reduced, and exceptions to carbon taxes narrowed or removed to provide coherence with both WTO rules and the net-zero target. • The UK has unilaterally reduced tariffs on a number of environmental goods but has maintained relatively high EU tariffs on bicycles and hybrid electric vehicles, which could be further reduced. Addressing areas of potential conflict: • A green recovery from COVID-19 provides an impetus to introduce broader and higher carbon taxes, but these could have a negative impact on UK firms and push the UK towards imposing commensurate carbon taxes on imported products. To avoid this potential area of conflict with WTO obligations and/ or relationships, the UK needs to raise ambition for carbon pricing in the WTO arena and in its FTA negotiations. • Barring an increase in global ambition to accelerate climate-friendly manufacturing, probably more trade restrictions will be needed to achieve a net-zero target. The UK will need to move towards or maintain trade preferences that support the target. • Current UK green subsidies are likely to be WTO-compliant but fall short of the ambition needed to achieve the net-zero target, but upping ambition also increases the risk of WTO non-compliance. This underscores the need to replace disciplines provided under the EU State Aid framework.
As countries move to achieve net-zero targets there is a risk their industries will relocate to c... more As countries move to achieve net-zero targets there is a risk their industries will relocate to countries where emitting CO2 is cheaper and easier. • An option for addressing this so-called carbon leakage is applying domestic carbon prices to imported products, or Carbon Border Adjustment (CBA). Both the UK and US are considering CBA and the EU has committed to introducing it. • It's still unclear how exactly CBA will be designed and the EU Commission will publish a proposal in July. • CBA design offers up a trilemma between the policy goals of environmental ambition, technical feasibility and fairness. • This trilemma means that there is no optimal solution for CBA design, but rather trade-offs between goals. • CBA also gives rise to the need for new forms of trade and climate cooperation to determine which other countries or producers have equivalent pricing, and therefore should be exempted. This might mean simply agreeing broad shared aims, such as net-zero targets, or much more detailed sector-specific analysis. • The upcoming G7 and COP , both hosted by the UK, provide an opportunity to make progress on these crucial questions for designing CBA and forming a larger transatlantic climate alliance.
This article examines a significant question in navigating trade and climate tension: how to reco... more This article examines a significant question in navigating trade and climate tension: how to recognize another country as having equivalent climate regulations. Such equivalence forms a core component of many proposed models of so-called climate clubs. Establishing equivalence between distinct national climate regulation regimes poses a unique challenge that draws upon both trade and environmental international cooperation. Drawing on existing proposals, I examine prospects for country-based cooperation through three models: ETS-linking, benchmarking of shared methods and minimum standards, and benchmarking of outcome duties. The analysis concludes that all models necessitate some trade-offs between the goals of rigorous oversight of climate objectives, inclusivity, and WTO compliance. Benchmarking of shared methods and minimum standards seems most feasible, and would provide a deeper level of integration between trade and climate cooperation, but necessitates a shift in how countri...
Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, create... more Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, created in 1992 and currently directed by Professor Erik Jones, aims to develop inter-disciplinary and comparative research on the major issues facing the process of European integration, European societies and Europe's place in 21st century global politics. The Centre is home to a large post-doctoral programme and hosts major research programmes, projects and data sets, in addition to a range of working groups and ad hoc initiatives. The research agenda is organised around a set of core themes and is continuously evolving, reflecting the changing agenda of European integration, the expanding membership of the European Union, developments in Europe's neighbourhood and the wider world.
This Briefing Paper is one of a pair of papers that looks at the strategic choice to accede to CP... more This Briefing Paper is one of a pair of papers that looks at the strategic choice to accede to CPTPP as part of a larger symbolic move away from the EU and its regulatory model. This paper considers CPTPP and UK agri-food regulation. Briefing Paper 61 examines the impact of CPTPP on UK digital trade. • Acceding to CPTPP underscores that the UK needs to decide – and defend – its approach to agri-food standards domestically. • Signing up to particular regulatory principles in any given FTA (in this case the CPTPP) may constrain domestic policy, and also what the UK can subsequently agree to with other partners in future FTAs. • Failing to adequately understand or anticipate the interests of CPTPP Parties could prove detrimental to upholding the UK’s strategic objectives, including maintaining current levels of protection in food standards and safety. • Current levels of protection in food standards and safety could be undermined through increased pressure on UK regulators and also ind...
As countries move to achieve net-zero targets there is a risk their industries will relocate to c... more As countries move to achieve net-zero targets there is a risk their industries will relocate to countries where emitting CO2 is cheaper and easier. • An option for addressing this so-called carbon leakage is applying domestic carbon prices to imported products, or Carbon Border Adjustment (CBA). Both the UK and US are considering CBA and the EU has committed to introducing it. • It's still unclear how exactly CBA will be designed and the EU Commission will publish a proposal in July. • CBA design offers up a trilemma between the policy goals of environmental ambition, technical feasibility and fairness. • This trilemma means that there is no optimal solution for CBA design, but rather trade-offs between goals. • CBA also gives rise to the need for new forms of trade and climate cooperation to determine which other countries or producers have equivalent pricing, and therefore should be exempted. This might mean simply agreeing broad shared aims, such as net-zero targets, or much more detailed sector-specific analysis. • The upcoming G7 and COP , both hosted by the UK, provide an opportunity to make progress on these crucial questions for designing CBA and forming a larger transatlantic climate alliance.
Relevant WTO treaties state that trade liberalization and environmental protection are ‘mutually ... more Relevant WTO treaties state that trade liberalization and environmental protection are ‘mutually supportive’. Yet negotiations reveal more contentious discourses: that environmental regulation comprises ‘green protectionism’, or that environmental protection is a ‘non-trade’ issue. Mutual supportiveness does not contradict, but rather encompasses, these divisions. It maintains positive ambiguity: an assertion that there is no conflict between economic development and environmental protection, and also an aspiration yet to be achieved. While it implies a duty to seek good faith solutions in event of conflicts of laws or norms, it does not proscribe any precise obligation. Thus it circumscribes the WTO’s environmental ambitions.
When establishing whether a disputed regulation is protectionist under the WTO National Treatment... more When establishing whether a disputed regulation is protectionist under the WTO National Treatment Principle, there are two key elements: its effect on the market for competitive products, and its intent or policy rationale. Yet the Appellate Body has formally rejected both elements, and in the surprising 2014 outcome ofEC–Seal Products, under the key provision GATT Article III(4), the latter was simply denied. This obfuscation leads to implicit and explicit conflation of these elements. In some disputes, qualitative findings about the existence and nature of competitive relationships are presented using the language of quantitative market analysis. In others, compelling policy objectives shape the outcome of a supposedly market-based analysis. This article proposes an approach that synthesizes two strands of scholarship, advocating more rigorous use of market-based evidence and stronger analysis of policy rationale. Separating these elements will achieve the appropriate balance betw...
The WTO Secretariat describes sustainable development as a central WTO principle. Relevant intern... more The WTO Secretariat describes sustainable development as a central WTO principle. Relevant international law treaties have declared sustainable development's mutual supportiveness with trade liberalization, and also emphasized the need to balance its ‘pillars’: economic development, often equated with trade liberalization, with environmental conservation and social welfare. While ‘mutual supportiveness’ suggests that sustainable development's environmental and social goals are a side effect of trade liberalization, ‘balancing’ involves weighing these different goals, and prompts the difficult question of which are most important, and who is empowered to decide. This paper traces these two broad theoretical conceptions through WTO legal texts, negotiations and dispute settlement, arguing that they have important pragmatic implications. In particular, to create mutual supportiveness WTO Director-General, Pascal Lamy, has stated the need for adequate domestic policies, suggesti...
Should consumers' preference for ‘green’ products help justify, from a WTO perspective, emerg... more Should consumers' preference for ‘green’ products help justify, from a WTO perspective, emerging regulations such as restrictions on trade in non-sustainable biofuels? Despite the role consumer preferences have played in WTO disputes, in association with the ‘like’ products concept, there has not been enough focused examination of their specific influence, particularly in disputes on ethical public policy issues, such as environmental or health regulations. To this end, this paper examines key GATT Article III disputes, pointing out that they included attempts both to measure, and also to interpret, consumer preferences. The latter approach becomes more tempting when consumer preferences are difficult to measure; import bans or restrictions associated with ethical public policy regulations can bring about such a situation. A hypothetical dispute about EC biofuels sustainability criteria demonstrates this problem. Options to make the concept of consumer preferences more coherent ...
Recent European Union sustainability criteria for biofuels provide an opportunity to understand m... more Recent European Union sustainability criteria for biofuels provide an opportunity to understand more precisely the relationship between national sustainable development policies and World Trade Organization (WTO) law. A desire to avoid WTO conflict was one reason for the omission of stronger criteria addressing negative social and environmental impacts of increased biofuels production. Thus, despite declarations of sustainable development's central importance
since tariff concessions and services commitments need not apply to all products and all sectors ... more since tariff concessions and services commitments need not apply to all products and all sectors and may be renegotiated at any time, WTO law is sufficiently flexible to permit each Member to adjust the scope of its commitments to open its market to foreign products and services to its policy constraints. I would like to recommend to anyone skeptical about this conclusion to take the trouble to examine the factual details of a cross-section of the cases decided by the Appellate Body. In the overwhelming majority of the cases, the measures declared to be illegal by the Appellate Body were the result of regulatory capture and its ruling facilitated the correction of a government failure in the domestic political process. Most of the cases demonstrate that Robert E. Hudec was right when he said that ‘protectionism tends to be traded between legislators as though it were a free good’.18 In general, the Appellate Body’s ruling made the regulatory capture and the costs it entailed more visible and the legislators, when implementing the ruling, could take a decision on the matter that was more informed and took into account a wider range of interests than the measure found to be inconsistent with WTO law. Moreover, in most cases, the implementation of the ruling tended to redistribute economic benefits acquired by a small but politically powerful group to the public at large. Democracy? Redistribution? I believe that anyone concerned about these matters has good reasons to welcome the corrective influence of the Appellate Body’s jurisprudence. For these reasons, I believe that the constraints of WTO law on democratic decision making and redistributive policies, and the ideas that the ‘trio of Hayekian’s at the GATT’ developed in the 1970s and 1980s on these matters, are not what Slobodian claims them to be in the final chapter of his book. Slobodian does not merely present in this chapter the perceptions that the demonstrators in Seattle had of the world economic order. He engages in an evaluation of the impact and problems of an institution without, however, examining the law, the jurisprudence, the methods of operation, or the powers of that institution. Had he done so, he would have discovered some of the misconceptions about the WTO that prompted his acquaintances to go to Seattle and would have enabled them to choose the target of their protests more wisely in the future. Instead, he propagates those misconceptions, which is an unhelpful ending to an otherwise excellent book.
• Post-Brexit food standards governance requires piecing together three new processes with very d... more • Post-Brexit food standards governance requires piecing together three new processes with very different-even opposite-implications. o Retained EU law gives devolved nations independent control over domestic food standards and allows ministers to make new rules in these areas. o Common frameworks aim to create harmonised food standards across the UK. o The Internal Market Bill (IM Bill) makes it very difficult for devolved nations to restrict or impede imports from other devolved nations. • Putting these pieces together provides a picture that is unfavourable to the regulatory and political autonomy of Scotland and Wales. • The IM Bill's market access requirements could override agreed harmonised standards set out in common frameworks, which are cooperative and consultative rather than legislative. • The IM Bill also undermines permitted devolution as England's larger size and market power may make it difficult for devolved nations to maintain different regulations. Key IM Bill requirements also apply to imported goods, suggesting that devolved nations would not be able to ban or restrict products admitted as a result of new Free Trade Agreements.
• To become a world leader in trade and climate policy the UK needs to develop an integrated stra... more • To become a world leader in trade and climate policy the UK needs to develop an integrated strategy that enhances areas of mutual supportiveness and addresses areas of potential conflict. Enhancing mutual supportiveness: • UK climate legislation does not currently include trade-related emissions. Factoring in aviation and shipping would help to address this problem. • The UK's approach to integrating climate into its new free trade agreements (FTAs), as well as its 'continuity agreements' with former EU FTA trade partners, is inconsistent. Notably, continuity agreements are a lost opportunity to update existing trade agreements in order to reflect the net-zero emissions by 2050 target. • Subsidies for fossil fuels should be transparent and reduced, and exceptions to carbon taxes narrowed or removed to provide coherence with both WTO rules and the net-zero target. • The UK has unilaterally reduced tariffs on a number of environmental goods but has maintained relatively high EU tariffs on bicycles and hybrid electric vehicles, which could be further reduced. Addressing areas of potential conflict: • A green recovery from COVID-19 provides an impetus to introduce broader and higher carbon taxes, but these could have a negative impact on UK firms and push the UK towards imposing commensurate carbon taxes on imported products. To avoid this potential area of conflict with WTO obligations and/ or relationships, the UK needs to raise ambition for carbon pricing in the WTO arena and in its FTA negotiations. • Barring an increase in global ambition to accelerate climate-friendly manufacturing, probably more trade restrictions will be needed to achieve a net-zero target. The UK will need to move towards or maintain trade preferences that support the target. • Current UK green subsidies are likely to be WTO-compliant but fall short of the ambition needed to achieve the net-zero target, but upping ambition also increases the risk of WTO non-compliance. This underscores the need to replace disciplines provided under the EU State Aid framework.
Relevant WTO treaties state that trade liberalization and environmental protection are ‘mutually ... more Relevant WTO treaties state that trade liberalization and environmental protection are ‘mutually supportive’. Yet negotiations reveal more contentious discourses: that environmental regulation comprises ‘green protectionism’, or that environmental protection is a ‘non-trade’ issue. Mutual supportiveness does not contradict, but rather encompasses, these divisions. It maintains positive ambiguity: an assertion that there is no conflict between economic development and environmental protection, and also an aspiration yet to be achieved. While it implies a duty to seek good faith solutions in event of conflicts of laws or norms, it does not proscribe any precise obligation. Thus it circumscribes the WTO’s environmental ambitions.
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