GREEN INDUSTRY, PROCUREMENT, AND TRADE: REFINING INTERNATIONAL TRADE?S RELATIONSHIP WITH GREEN POLICY

Green industrial policy, an aspirational headline with the 2019 Green New Deal Resolution, has continued to gain steam and take shape. Green industry was a core focus of presidential platforms during the 2020 election. Federal agencies have demonstrated an increased willingness to revamp their purchasing power-that is, their procurement policy-to buy green products and stimulate emerging green industrial sectors. In general, these policy shifts toward green industry typically tout three primary goals: to develop the domestic manufacturing base and to strengthen both environmental and labor protections. For instance, in November 2021, as part of the larger Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Congress took aim at the failure of supply chains to meet adequate environmental and labor standards by enacting a domestic content preference-scheme for infrastructure programs receiving federal financial assistance. The nationalist orientation of this kind of policy, however, often runs afoul of the nondiscrimination spirit of World Trade Organization disciplines.This Note evaluates how trade disciplines can enable a green-industrial strategy in government procurement while abiding by WTO disciplines, offering a few options. While countries continue to aggressively deploy green industrial policies to attain environmental benefits, these strategies must be carefully structured to avoid coop-tation by populist, protectionist goals. As such, this Note considers the implications that arise when this form of green industrial procurement supports the advance-ment of global welfare-and when it does not. In particular, this Note explores how refining the traditional relationship between international trade rules and green -industrial initiatives can produce mutually beneficial results. On the one hand, trade rules can be interpreted to permit environmental and labor-conscious deci-sionmaking while protecting against protectionist discrimination. On the other, this Note proposes that procurement decisionmaking should incorporate supply-chain disclosure or cost-accounting of environmental and labor impact, which, when jus-tified under the existing public morals discipline in WTO trade agreements, forms a method of government engagement that can enable a more robust international trade regime.