With the increasing trade tensions between the United States and China, pressures created by Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic, most trade scholars have focused on rising protectionism exhibited through defensive strategies such as tariffs and export controls. However, this focus ignores the fundamental shift in international trade goals of the United States and the European Union towards a values-based trade agenda.

Through two comparative case studies on cosmetics and medical devices, SIS Professor Michelle Egan and her co-author Fernanda G. Nicola highlight in a new NYU Journal of Legislation and Public Policy article how the promotion of competitive liberalization in transatlantic trade has not generated the promised harmonization result. Instead, it has created social and environmental inequities. The case studies point out that to incorporate social and environmental equity adjustments for vulnerable and marginalized communities, trade regulators, negotiators, and lawyers alike ought to assess the anticipated distributive effects in regulatory cooperation and the actual enforcement tools of regulation of their values-based trade agenda.

Read the full article here.