ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the main findings from the assessment of the effectiveness of the environmental policies for five US trade agreements - the regional North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), and bilateral trade agreements with Singapore, Oman, and Peru - and discusses some reasons why the environmental policies may have had limited effectiveness, including a lack of adequate funding for implementation, poor policy design, and the changing nature of the environmental concern or problem that gave rise to the policy in the first place. Based on the insights from the assessment, the chapter offers policy recommendations for the future integration of environmental policies into US trade agreements. The recommendations include the completion of a comprehensive ex ante assessment of the institutional capacity of its trading partners to protect the environment coupled with the development and implementation of a more systematic and empirically grounded approach to strengthening their environmental protection regimes through robust environmental cooperation. Moreover, the recommendations include elimination of the coercive policies related to effective enforcement of environmental laws that were designed to address hypothetical environmental problems that have not materialized.
