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The Environment and International Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

David Vogel
David Vogel
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

This article examines the increasingly important and often contentious relationship between international trade and environmental regulation in the United States. It begins by explaining why these two policy areas have recently become more interdependent and then explores some of the specific controversies surrounding the contemporary linkages between trade policy and environmental regulation. The article concludes by analyzing the long-term political and economic impact of the relationship between trade and environmental policy.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 12 , Special Issue 1: Special Issue: Environmental Politics and Policy, 1960s–1990s , January 2000 , pp. 72 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2000

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References

Notes

1. This is the central theme in Vogel, David, Trading Up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1995)Google Scholar.

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41. Ibid., 4.

42. Letter to President George Bush from Congressmen Richard Gephardt, 27 March 1991.

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59. See, for example, Birdsall, Nancy and Wheeler, David, “Trade Policy and Industrial Pollution in Latin America: Where Are the Pollution Havens?” in International Trade and the Environment, ed. Low, Patrick (Washington, D.C., 1992), 159–68Google Scholar.

60. For a comprehensive analysis of the impact of trade liberalization on both economic efficiency and environmental quality, see The Greening of World Trade Issues, ed. Anderson, Kym and Blackhurst, Richard (Ann Arbor, 1992)Google Scholar.

61. Dean, Judith, “Trade and the Environment: A Survey of the Literature,” in International Trade and the Environment, ed. Low, World Bank Papers, 1992, p. 15.Google Scholar According to a recent comprehensive study, “there is almost no evidence that investors in developing coun-tries are fleeing environmental costs at home.” Eskeland, Gunnar S. and Harrison, Ann E., “Moving to Greener Pastures? Multinationals and the Pollution-have Hypothesis,” Policy Research Working Paper 1744, the World Bank, 1997.Google Scholar For a contrary position, see Stewart, Richard, “Environmental Regulation and International Competitiveness,” Yale Law Journal 102 (June 1993): 2041–2122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62. Quoted in Pearson, Charles, “Trade and Environment: The United States Experience” (New York: UN Conference on Trade and Development, January 1994), 52.Google Scholar

63. See Porter, Michael, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (New York, 1990), 685–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and also Moore, Curtis and Miller, Alan, Green Gold (Boston, 1994)Google Scholar.

64. “The evidence suggests that foreign-owned firms in four developing countries are less polluting than comparable domestic plants.” See Eskeland and Harrison, “Moving to Greener Pastures.”

65. See , Vogel, Trading Up, chap. 8.Google Scholar