On Thursday, April 14th, WITA held a webinar discussing how the U.S., EU and other like-minded partners can work together to offset short term increases in fossil fuel production outside of Russia by moving quickly to facilitate trade in environmental goods and technology; to accelerate the move to other, renewable sources of energy; and to guard against future supply shocks.

Featured Speakers:

Dr. Andreas Goldthau, Research Group Leader, IASS Potsdam; Franz Haniel Chair for Public Policy at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, University of Erfurt

Maureen Hinman, Co-Founder and Chairman, Silverado Policy Accelerator; Former Director for Environment and Natural Resources in the Office of the United States Trade Representative

Vanessa Sciarra, Vice President, Trade & International Competitiveness at the American Clean Power Association

Moderator, Henning Gloystein, Director, Energy, Climate & Resources, Eurasia Group

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Henning Gloystein

Henning Gloystein is the Director of Energy, Climate, and Resources at the Eurasia Group. Based in London, Henning covers geopolitical risk in oil and natural gas supplies, the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and the environmental pressures that urbanization and industrialization has on emerging market economies and on natural resource supply chains. Prior to returning to London in 2021, Henning was based in Singapore for seven years, covering the rise of Asia/Pacific to become the world’s biggest consuming region of natural resources. Before joining Eurasia Group in 2019, Henning was Asia energy editor and deputy editor in charge for Asian commodities at Reuters. Before that, he led Reuters’s European power, gas, and coal coverage from London. Henning was introduced to the world of energy and commodities working for Platts in London, where he led the European power pricing team during the region’s market liberalization period.

Andreas Goldthau

Dr. Andreas Goldthau is the Research Group Leader of the ISIGET project focusing on energy justice and the Global South at IASS Potsdam. He holds the Franz Haniel Chair for Public Policy at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, University of Erfurt. Before joining IASS Professor Goldthau served as Professor in International Relations at Royal Holloway College, University of London and as Professor at Central European University’s School of Public Policy. He was a Marie Curie Senior Fellow with the Geopolitics of Energy Project at Harvard Kennedy School and an Adjunct Professor with John Hopkins’ MSc program in energy policy and climate. He also held postdoctoral appointments at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, the RAND Corporation and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. His academic interests lie in the political economy of the low carbon transition, energy security and global energy governance.

Maureen Hinman

Maureen Hinman is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator. Ms. Hinman, a leading policy expert on environmental industry, most recently served as Director for Environment and Natural Resources at the Office of the United States Trade Representative. At USTR she led a range of multilateral, regional, and bilateral trade policy initiatives focused on the environmental goods and services sector as well as natural resource conservation. Ms. Hinman previously served as the U.S. Department of Commerce’s senior industry trade specialist responsible for international policy development and interagency advocacy for the U.S. environmental technology industry. Prior to entering federal service Hinman consulted on regional integration and trade policy implementation at Nathan Associates, a Washington-based economic policy consultancy.

Vanessa Sciarra

Vanessa Sciarra is the Vice President Trade & International Competitiveness at the American Clean Power Association.In this role, she will focus on addressing key challenges and opportunities the industry faces in supply chain, domestic production, trade imports and exports, and workforce. Her purview includes legislative, regulatory, and policy initiatives.

Prior to ACP, Sciarra was vice president of legal affairs and trade and investment policy at the National Foreign Trade Council for the past four years. She brings extensive experience in international trade matters in the federal government, having previously served in the roles of vice president of the Emergency Committee for American Trade (ECAT), as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, and as assistant general counsel with the Office of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). A member of the District of Columbia Bar, she has also been in private practice at the law firms of Cassidy Levy Kent LLC and Holland & Knight LLP.

The post WITA’s Trade & Environment Series: Russian Energy Sanctions – A Trade Pivot to a Cleaner Future appeared first on WITA.

On April 20, 2021, WITA discussed the efforts to increase trade in environmental goods, technologies and services through bilateral, regional and multilateral trade agreements.

PROGRAM AGENDA 

Welcome: 4:00 PM (US/Eastern)

• Kenneth Levinson, Executive Director, WITA

Remarks and Panelist Discussion: 4:05 PM

• Sarah Thorn, Senior Director, Global Government Affairs, Walmart
• Mark Linscott, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council/Senior Advisor, The Asia Group
• Ambassador Vangelis Vitalis, New Zealand Deputy Secretary Trade and Economic, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
• Moderator: Maureen Hinman, Co-Founder and Chairman, Silverado Policy Accelerator

Followed by:

• Q & A with Audience – Webinar attendees are encouraged to use the Q&A function on the Zoom app to submit their questions in real time.

OVERVIEW

On Tuesday, Silverado’s co-founder and executive chairman Maureen Hinman joined the Washington International Trade Association (WITA) for its virtual event “Trading For Good,” a panel discussion exploring efforts to increase trade in environmental goods, services, and technologies through bilateral, regional and multilateral trade agreements. The event marked the second installment of WITA’s Trade and the Environment Series, a multipart event series co-sponsored by Silverado Policy Accelerator examining issues at the intersection of international trade and the environment.

Hinman moderated a wide-ranging discussion between three esteemed trade experts: Mark Linscott, the former assistant U.S. Trade Representative for South and Central Asian Affairs and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council; Sarah Thorn, senior director of global government affairs for Walmart; and Ambassador Vangelis Vitalis, New Zealand’s deputy secretary for trade and economics at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The event attracted a broad audience, including current and former government officials, academics, industry representatives, foreign envoys, and non-governmental stakeholders.

The panelists focused in particular on potential paths toward a new agreement to expand market access for environmental goods following the collapse of plurilateral negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2016.

Ambassador Vitalis argued that the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which accounts for 60 percent of total global GDP, can play a vital role in laying the groundwork for a future agreement by building off the 2011 APEC 54 list. Vitalis said that New Zealand, APEC’s host nation this year, is hoping to begin building broad support for an expanded list of environmental goods, an issue that proved a fatal sticking point in the WTO negotiations.

“Given that APEC is both consensus-based and voluntary, we think that it’s an opportunity to develop a longer and more ambitious list, and then we hope that APEC economies will want to take that to Geneva as a contribution to the process there, and also for [other nations] to think of it as a reference point,” he said. “In the APEC context, it’s very much a ‘define-by-doing’ [mentality] … We’ve very conscious of how long it takes to negotiate [a list], so we’re very anxious to avoid a protracted process.”

Linscott raised the possibility that future negotiations could move forward without China at the table — an option which was seen among trade experts as unlikely in the past, but which has gained some traction following the collapse of the 2016 negotiations, largely as a result of China actions.

“The question is, should China be at the table?” said Linscott. “Certainly there’s a free-rider problem if China is out, but given [past] experience, with China in, do we ever get to an agreement?”

Linscott also argued that an interim agreement on environmental goods could potentially provide a stepping-stone toward a broader agreement — an option that Hinman proposed in a recent op-ed for WITA — but noted that such an approach could run afoul of WTO principles.

“I think [an interim agreement] prompts a necessary discussion in the tariff world about the implications of [the most favored nation principle],” he said. “There’s this knee-jerk reaction that we have to protect that principle, but when there are concerns about free-riders — and one in particular — it should prompt healthy debate on the approach going forward.”

On the business side, Thorn presented Walmart’s case for a new environmental goods agreement, arguing that companies like Walmart would benefit from a trade agreement that lowered the costs of the green technologies that large companies need to meet their own environmental goals. Thorn also argued that there is broad-based support for a new agreement in the business community, noting that companies like Walmart have recognized that expanding access to green goods and services is not only the ethical path forward, but is also good for business.

“For us, this is about supply chain resilience and supply chain sustainability,” said Thorn. “We can’t just exhaust people and planet. We have to be thinking about how we’re going to renew if we’re going to be around in another, twenty, fifty, one hundred years.”

All participants said they were encouraged by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s recent comments on trade and the environment, in which she made a strong case for using trade policy to advance climate objectives but stopped short of delineating specific trade measures the United States supports.

“Traditionally, in order to get things done on trade and the environment, we’ve needed U.S. leadership,” said Ambassador Vitalis. “It’s all well and good for the keen, goody-two-shoes countries like [New Zealand] to say, ‘We need to get something done on trade and the environment’ … but we really do need U.S. leadership, U.S. engagement, and the U.S. leaning in to really drive this agenda forward.”

Linscott said he is optimistic that the Biden administration will push for renewed environmental goods negotiations.

“During the Obama administration, [officials] were following very closely the negotiations on environmental goods, and they were big cheerleaders for efforts to get a trade agreement that would have some benefits for the diffusion of environmental technologies,” he said. “Some of those people are still around and are working for [United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate] John Kerry, so I can imagine there being some degree of excitement for those who do climate negotiations with respect to a new initiative among trade negotiators on EGA — and that’s how it should be.”

Across the board, participants agreed that renewed negotiations would mark a major step forward in the global effort to combat climate change — although it remains too early to tell whether they will take place in APEC, the WTO, a bilateral or regional forum, or in all of the above.

“Let’s not pretend that trade is going to be the silver bullet to solve climate change, but trade can make a contribution,” said Vitalis. “I think that’s a very powerful message to our societies: trade is actually part of the solution here, not part of the problem.”

To view the original overview on the Silverado Policy Accelerator website, please click here.

The post WITA’s Trade & Environment Series: Trading for Good appeared first on WITA.

WITA welcomed an expert panel to discuss how seismic shifts in global energy markets since NAFTA’s implementation will impact renegotiation efforts. Today, North America is essentially energy self-sufficient. They examined how NAFTA renegotiation will impact energy trade across North American borders.

Featuring

Maryam S. Brown, Sempra Energy

Guy Caruso, CSIS

Jack Gerard, American Petroleum Institute

David Goldwyn, Goldwyn Global Strategies, LLC

Lorraine Hawley, Archer Daniels Midland Co.

Sergio Marchi, Canadian Electricity Association

Moderator: The Honorable Charles Boustany Jr., Capitol Counsel LLC

The post WITA NAFTA Series: Energy and the NAFTA appeared first on WITA.

The post US Trade and Energy Policy Coherence or Conflicts appeared first on WITA.

The post APEC and the USA: Looking to 2011 and Beyond appeared first on WITA.