Project MUSE®: Brookings Trade Forum - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/26
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Brookings Trade Forum.daily12026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-US2000 - 2008/2009Latest Articles: Brookings Trade ForumTWOProject MUSE®Brookings Trade Forum1534-06351520-5479Latest articles in Brookings Trade Forum. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The Economic and Environmental Effects of Border Tax Adjustments for Climate Policy
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/271032
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For the foreseeable future, climate change policy will be considerably more stringent in some countries than in others. Indeed, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change explicitly states that developed countries must take meaningful action before any obligations are to be placed on developing countries.However, differences in climate policy will lead to differences in energy costs, and to concerns about competitive advantage. In high-cost countries, there will be political pressure to impose border tax adjustments (BTAs), or "green tariffs," on imports from countries with little or no climate policy and low energy costs. The BTAs would be based on the carbon emissions associated with the production
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/26/image/coversmallThe Economic and Environmental Effects of Border Tax Adjustments for Climate Policy2009-07-26text/htmlen-USThe Economic and Environmental Effects of Border Tax Adjustments for Climate Policy2009-07-262009TWOProject MUSE®1860782026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002009-07-26International Trade Law and the Economics of Climate Policy: Evaluating the Legality and Effectiveness of Proposals to Address Competitiveness and Leakage Concerns
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/271033
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There is a growing consensus that a market mechanism that puts a price on carbon, such as a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax, should be at the heart of the most flexible and cost-effective way to address climate change.1 Ideally, such an approach would be adopted as part of a multilateral agreement. The reason is that carbon is a global pollutant, so a ton of carbon emitted in Beijing contributes to climate change just as much as a ton of carbon emitted in New York. This tragedy-of-the-commons nature of climate change raises concerns that any unilateral effort by the United States to put a price on carbon could disadvantage U.S. industrial firms or undermine the measure's environmental objective. These two
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/26/image/coversmallInternational Trade Law and the Economics of Climate Policy: Evaluating the Legality and Effectiveness of Proposals to Address Competitiveness and Leakage Concerns2009-07-26text/htmlen-USInternational Trade Law and the Economics of Climate Policy: Evaluating the Legality and Effectiveness of Proposals to Address Competitiveness and Leakage Concerns2009-07-262009TWOProject MUSE®1718842026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002009-07-26Addressing the Leakage/Competitiveness Issue in Climate Change Policy Proposals
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/271034
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Of all the daunting obstacles faced by the effort to combat global climate change, the problem of leakage is perhaps the most recent to gain serious attention from policy makers. Assume that a core of rich countries is able to agree for the remainder of the century on a path of targets for emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), following the lead of the Kyoto Protocol, or to agree on other measures to cut back on emissions, and that the path is aggressive enough at face value to go some way toward achieving the GHG concentration goals that environmental scientists say are necessary. Will global emissions in fact be reduced? Even under the business-as-usual scenario—that is, the path along which technical experts
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/26/image/coversmallAddressing the Leakage/Competitiveness Issue in Climate Change Policy Proposals2009-07-26text/htmlen-USAddressing the Leakage/Competitiveness Issue in Climate Change Policy Proposals2009-07-262009TWOProject MUSE®1059752026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002009-07-26Technology Transfers and Climate Change: International Flows, Barriers, and Frameworks
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/271035
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Discourse concerning international technology transfers to address climate change issues is typically based on a paradigm that is focused on North South technology flows and financial flows, especially in the context of official development assistance programs or offset projects under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. This paradigm is useful for many analytic and negotiating agendas. However, it reflects an overly narrow conceptualization of the nature, sources, and methods of international technology transfers. It thus neglects important issues that need to be addressed in order to utilize more fully the potential of international technology transfers for climate change mitigation and/or
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/26/image/coversmallTechnology Transfers and Climate Change: International Flows, Barriers, and Frameworks2009-07-26text/htmlen-USTechnology Transfers and Climate Change: International Flows, Barriers, and Frameworks2009-07-262009TWOProject MUSE®1386272026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002009-07-26Five "Gs": Lessons from World Trade for Governing Global Climate Change
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/271036
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Reversing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the world's $60 trillion economy will be among the most complex international governance challenges ever—rivaling the forty-year effort to dramatically reduce tariffs and establish a rules-based trading system. Given that nearly fifteen years have passed since the completion of the last global trade pact, it is easy to forget that the World Trade Organization (WTO) stands tall among the great successes of global governance, precisely because it was so difficult to accomplish. A counterpart twin tower—a global system to address climate change—can mimic the trade regime's most successful governance principles, and learn from its structural weaknesses. Perhaps more
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/26/image/coversmallFive "Gs": Lessons from World Trade for Governing Global Climate Change2009-07-26text/htmlen-USFive "Gs": Lessons from World Trade for Governing Global Climate Change2009-07-262009TWOProject MUSE®584502026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002009-07-26The Climate Commons and a Global Environmental Organization
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/271037
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Over the period 2000 to 2008, the United States maintained a largely hostile posture toward multilateralism, ranging from military adventurism to rejection of international norms for human rights and climate change. Its support for the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations was undercut by a failure to live up to global commitments to foreign assistance (the Millennium Challenge) and protectionist and retrograde 2008 agricultural legislation. If this experience shows America anything, it is that renouncing its role as a constructive multilateral leader (dating to 1945) has been a disaster for its foreign policy and the esteem in which it is held.This desultory period is now at an end, and a fresh start can
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/26/image/coversmallThe Climate Commons and a Global Environmental Organization2009-07-26text/htmlen-USThe Climate Commons and a Global Environmental Organization2009-07-262009TWOProject MUSE®1350202026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002009-07-26Reflections on Climate Change and Trade
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/271038
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Let me start with a general comment that is relevant as background to the theme of this book, and then move on to some of the specifics of the interface between trade, the World Trade Organization, and the environment that many of the chapters above have addressed. At the outset, we need to remember that those who work on trade (mostly academics) and those who work on the environment (mostly activists) have traditionally been at loggerheads from time to time.Why? One important philosophical difference that underlies much of this tension, which I think we tend to forget, is that trade economists are typically considering and condemning governmental interventions (specifically, protectionism, such as the imposition
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/26/image/coversmallReflections on Climate Change and Trade2009-07-26text/htmlen-USReflections on Climate Change and Trade2009-07-262009TWOProject MUSE®189432026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002009-07-26Foreword
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/315140
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This volume is the latest demonstration of the commitment by Brookings to
contribute in every possible and appropriate way to finding a solution to
the existential problem of climate change. The debate on this subject has shifted
from science to public policy. Though no consensus has emerged, it is clear
that addressing climate change effectively will require understanding the deep
interactions between it and other policy areas. Reaching an international agreement
for meaningful global action will require diplomacy at the highest level.
Sustaining lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions will require a new energy
infrastructure. And reducing emissions could end up reshaping almost every
aspect of nations’ domestic
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/26/image/coversmallForeword2009-07-26text/htmlen-USForeword2009-07-262009TWOProject MUSE®46272026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002009-07-26Editor's Overview
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/315141
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Global climate change has leapt to the forefront of the public conscience.
As policymakers grapple with the challenge of shaping policy to achieve
a domestic and international consensus, attention has turned to the role that
trade- related measures could play. In both Europe and the United States, policymakers
have considered implementing so- called border adjustments on
goods coming from countries with few or no climate change policies. These
policymakers argue that such measures would protect domestic firms from
“unfair” competition abroad and provide a stick to discipline laggard countries
into implementing their own climate change policies.Although this “negative” agenda of trade- as- stick has garnered most of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/26/image/coversmallEditor's Overview2009-07-26text/htmlen-USEditor's Overview2009-07-262009TWOProject MUSE®124832026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002009-07-26