''Trading Up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy'' (

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

1995, ) is a book by

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

political scientist and business professor, David Vogel. It examines the impact of

free trade Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold Economic liberalism, economically liberal positions, while economic nationalist politica ...

environmental Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

regulations. It analyzes the

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is a legal agreement between many countries, whose overall purpose was to promote international trade by reducing or eliminating trade barriers such as tariffs or quotas. According to its p ...

(GATT),

North American Free Trade Agreement The North American Free Trade Agreement (, TLCAN; , ALÉNA), referred to colloquially in the Anglosphere as NAFTA, ( ) was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that created a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The ...

(NAFTA), the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, and the treaties that created the

European Community The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisbo ...

and Union, and looks at cases including the GATT tuna-dolphin dispute, the EC's beef hormone ban, the Danish bottle case. Some environmentalists have expressed concern that

trade liberalization Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold economically liberal positions, while economic nationalist political parties generall ...

and acceptance of trade rules (with, for example, the

World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that g ...

) will retard and even undermine national regulations for

consumer protection Consumer protection is the practice of safeguarding buyers of goods and services, and the public, against unfair practices in the marketplace. Consumer protection measures are often established by law. Such laws are intended to prevent business ...

and environmental improvement, as in the tuna-dolphin case. These observers are also concerned about competition among nations for footloose industries. This interesting book systematically examines the original

, the

Single European Act The Single European Act (SEA) was the first major revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The Act set the European Community an objective of establishing a single market by 31 December 1992, and a forerunner of the European Union's Common Fore ...

, the

and its 1979 standards code, the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Area, and the more recent

, as well as the states in the free trade area of the United States. Vogel finds that, while counterexamples do exist, trade liberalization on balance has strongly reinforced environment-improving regulations. A good example is auto emissions requirements, which have gradually stiffened and leveled up in the trading system over time. Three reasons are adduced, mainly concerning the major markets. First, stiffer regulations sometimes enhance the competitive advantage of firms, thus lining up industrialists with environmentalists in an open economy. Second, these markets (California in the United States, Germany in Europe, the United States and EU in the world at large) can set product standards that outsiders have to meet. Third, to the extent they are governed by environmentally sensitive parties (mainly the United States and EU), the major economies have negotiated international agreements that foster environmental improvement.

References

1995 in the environment Environmental non-fiction books Books about globalization 1995 non-fiction books Harvard University Press books {{globalization-book-stub

See also

References