Category Archives: trade

Let China Pay the Cost of Solar Energy and Electric Vehicles

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June 28, 2024 — Lethal heat waves this month hit the US and other regions throughout the Northern hemisphere, including India and the eastern Mediterranean.  June will probably mark the 13th consecutive month of average global temperatures that exceed all observations in records going back to 1850.  The primary explanation is, of course, that emissions and concentrations of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) have in recent years increased even more rapidly than had been feared.

  1. A pleasant surprise

In one area, however, progress in the fight against global climate change has been greater than had been expected.  Use of solar power and other sources of renewable energy in the US and the European Union has risen rapidly.  The beginnings of an historic shift from internal combustion engines to electric–powered vehicles (EVs) have multiplied the importance of the switch to solar and wind sources of electric power. read more

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Let the WTO Referee Carbon Border Tariffs

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December 2, 2022 — The most important task in confronting global climate change is the need to enforce serious quantitative limits on Greenhouse Gas emissions, such as the Nationally Defined Contributions which were originally negotiated in the 2015 Paris Agreement.  The 27th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC,  which concluded in Sharm-el-Sheikh November 20, did not tackle this task.  Carbon border equalization measures, including tariffs against carbon-intensive imports from lax countries, might supply the teeth that have been missing from such agreements.  But they also risk advancing protectionism, which would ultimately slow the needed global energy transition.  Adjudicating the fairness of carbon tariffs would be a good job for a reinvigorated WTO. read more

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A Resilience Case for International Trade

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July 3, 2022 — Some new problems have afflicted the economy in the last year.  Two examples come from the US:  blockages in supply chain logistics and a critical shortage in infant milk formula. One problem applies to the EU even more than to the US: energy scarcity due to sanctions against Russian fossil fuel exports.  And one applies almost everywhere: inflation.

Some have associated these four problems with what is said to be excessive dependence on international trade, that is, with globalization.  Consequently, deglobalization, fragmentation, reshoring, friend-shoring, decoupling, and resilience have become popular buzzwords.  The feeling is that individual countries would not have been so exposed to shocks if they had been more self-sufficient. read more

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