ABSTRACT
The Trade and Environment conference assembled a distinguished and knowledgeable set of speakers. The increasingly frequent calls for the next General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) round to be a “green” round mean much more research must to be done to diffuse the often highly emotional rhetoric emphasizing the incompatibilities of free trade goals and environmental protection. An avalanche of confrontations appears to be developing between the GATT and interest groups opposed to GATT interference in environmental policy. Environmental special interests will be able to generate enough authority, through political pressure or through the courts, to gain trade sanctions against Norwegian seafood. According to industry sources, when confronted with a “dolphin-safe” label on cans of tuna, some confused US consumers wondered if tuna they had consumed prior to the labeling had also contained dolphin meat. A micro-oriented approach toward the problem exposes facets of the distribution of costs and benefits that a more macro-oriented approach might not.
