International trade and investment treaties are based on a problematic assumption that countries trade because they have different competitive advantages and can be exchanged for mutual benefit for everyone.
The problem with this hypothesis is that it does not clarify how the various advantages arise.
The way countries and companies gain specific competitive advantages is through the process of social inequality, including gender and race inequality.
this Series of articles Published in collaboration with Dalia Gebrial and Harpreet Kaur Paul and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in London.It first appeared in a Global Green New Deal Outlook.
Inequality
As feminist economists believe, gender inequality in the labor market seeks competitive advantage by avoiding paying the full cost of labor and the reproduction of the earth.
For example, a company may establish itself in a jurisdiction with less taxation, which has a negative impact on the available income to provide local public education, health services, and vital environmental standards.
Multinational companies have also created complex supply networks to push any costs of contributing through these methods to local contractors, who then squeeze labor and develop or ignore the environment in order to obtain profits from a small amount of operating income, while big brands It occupies most of the trade benefits.
Competitiveness
The way in which workers and the environment are treated and regulated constitutes what we call a competitive advantage, not the result or “externality.”
The pressure of companies and countries to comply with the “commercial terms” of trade and investment treaties (not to mention private contracts signed between companies) means that unless workers and the environment’s contribution to production and trade are properly recognized, treatment and remuneration are intangible Globalization and/or devaluation will continue to provide a source of global economic competitiveness.
So, how can this contribution be recognized in international trade regulation so that the issues of “employment”, “environmental protection” and “gender equality”-using the terms of these treaties-can change the essence of “commercial clauses”?
Rethink
If we proceed from the premise that the composition and conditions of reproduction/productive labor vary from country to country, depending on gender, class, race, ethnicity, migration flow, etc., and resources are unevenly distributed between and within the global South and the global North , Then uniform and universal environmental and labor supervision through multilateral trade rules is not advisable, especially in cases related to trade sanctions.
However, it is possible and necessary to make the “commercial clauses” of current trade treaties accountable, and we can start by carefully examining their impact on the environment, working and living conditions.
The next step will involve a broader rethinking of trade treaties and commercial relations, placing decent environment, working and living conditions, rather than global competition and capital accumulation, at the center of trade policy.
This author
Donatella Alessandrini is a professor of law at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK.
