WTO is key to global carbon pricing – it tests potential trade solutions in WTO dispute settlement bodies

On the second category, the vital thing I’m thinking of is dispute settlement and especially one particular upcoming issue that might be the most important thing the DS system — maybe even the WTO itself — will ever do. What’s surprising about dispute settlement isn’t that it’s under pressure but that it’s survived as long as it has. A sage and talented FT world trade editor called Alan was writing back in 2007 about the risk of judicial over-reach eroding support for the system, and quoting some dude called Robert Lighthizer to that effect. The Curse of Lighthizer eventually descended and the US crippled the Appellate Body. But the workaround version, dreamt up mainly by the EU, now has 53 members and seems to be functioning — issuing rulings on vital issues such as Belgian frites and so on. Just as well. There’s one overwhelming issue that trade needs to address: the environment, and particularly carbon emissions. As I’ve written before, there’s only one way the world is going to get anywhere near a global carbon price, and it’s not through negotiations at the OECD or the UN COP process or in the IMF or indeed at any other institution that fancies itself as a forum for global environmental governance. (Nor is it going to happen through voluntary corporate or investor-driven ESG-type carbon standards, the PR gunk for which clogs up my email inbox on a daily basis.) The only game in town is internationalising the EU’s emissions pricing through its carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) by trading partners adopting it in order to get access to the EU market. CBAM is pretty clearly going to be challenged in the WTO dispute settlement mechanism by India or other big middle-income countries. Maybe it will come through unscathed, maybe the EU will have to tweak it. Maybe there’ll be some elements it can’t adjust and will have to compensate elsewhere. But what emerges will have at least some degree of legitimacy from being thoroughly chewed over in various WTO committees and other conversations and tested through dispute settlement. The best way to do global carbon pricing? Hell no. The only currently feasible one? Yes. Heavily dependent on the WTO to stress-test it? You bet. What else can we say for the WTO? It’s still alive. No one else is doing much of the trade work it does. Almost every country in the world has joined. (The mighty nations of Comoros and Timor-Leste, combined population just over 2mn, are joining at this week’s ministerial.) No member has left. It does some good research and surveillance of members’ trade policy. It puts on a good public discussion event each year. It’s got a better logo than most international organisations. Its HQ is in a lovely location by Lake Geneva and has a restful Chinese garden in front, fabulous Socialist Realist ceramics and murals in the entrance hall and a nice atrium with a tree in it. I’ve seen worse.