Climate change and trade regulation

This article discusses the relationship between climate change and trade policy in North America. While the emerging narrative includes some failed promises, fragmentation, and a misplaced emphasis on competitiveness at the expense of progress in dealing with climate change, there are still opportunities to replace existing legal arrangements with ones that take the climate change dimensions of trade more seriously. The first part briefly discusses the World Trade Organization framework of trade and climate change through the lens of Sustainable Development Goal 13. The second part looks at the early days of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the promise for innovation contained therein. The third part examines the replacement of NAFTA by the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement. The article then turns to three sections outlining opportunities that exist in the North American trade context to explore innovative approaches in transnational/international climate change and trade regulation. The first opportunity outlined is green procurement in the context of the USMCA and the WTO Government Procurement Agreement. The second opportunity emerges from the longstanding softwood lumber disputes between the United States and Canada. The third opportunity is Border Carbon Adjustments which can follow the adoption of a national carbon price. The USMCA emerges as a critical agreement among many. Both the impact on the environment and the footprint from this extensive commercial integration, as well as the opportunity for massive changes if coordinated regulatory frameworks were to be adopted to tackle climate change, are enormous.