This year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland turned at times into a freeform airing of grievances by EU lawmakers over Biden's Inflation Reduction Act and the impact it could have on EU producers. politico.com/news/2023/01/1…
But it also revealed the makings of a more productive race-to-the-top dynamic, with the European Commission outlining its own take on the IRA. ec.europa.eu/commission/pre…
It's a welcome turn. Joe Biden announced his intention in 2019 to take on board parts of the Green New Deal, which itself was developed in response to the failure in Europe of carbon pricing and other market-oriented approaches to the climate crisis. washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…
In 2020, Biden unveiled the Build Back Better agenda, which crystallized this pivot towards a carrots-first through an embrace of domestic industrial policy. joebiden.com/made-in-americ…
Biden's policies reflected a shifting paradigm in US politics that aspired to combat authoritarianism by moving past neoliberalism onto a more inclusive and sustainable path, as @FeliciaWongRI wrote @DemJournal. democracyjournal.org/magazine/64/ov…
As @Sunnysmalhotra and I wrote @rooseveltinst, the post-neoliberal pivot represented by the Inflation Reduction Act is the best bet to make the US a credible partner on climate, by embedding benefits throughout both red and blue states. rooseveltinstitute.org/2022/11/22/cle…
Yet, despite the longstanding frustration with the US not taking climate action, too many in the trade and diplomacy world spent too much of 2021 opposing Build Back Better, which helped lead to the gutting of some of its most pro-worker provisions. thehill.com/policy/equilib…
Thankfully, cooler heads have been on a mission to prevail. At a @rooseveltinst forum, @AmbassadorTai noted that the climate crisis creates an opportunity "to work together, to tackle this existential crisis that threatens all of us.” rooseveltinstitute.org/event/progress…
And @BrianDeeseNEC noted "we’re nowhere near the global saturation point of needed investments. We should welcome actions" to subsidize and scale up new green industries. whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
Initiatives like the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum offer a forum to coordinate parallel industrial strategies... nytimes.com/2022/12/07/bus…
The moment also offers an opening to align trade rules with 21st century realities. nytimes.com/2023/01/25/bus…
When I had just defended my dissertation and was on the job market, @ErikVoeten encouraged me to try to develop some of my arguments around #ISDS for a policy audience. It ended up becoming a section of my book Judge Knot. washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-c…
A year later, I was able to continue that line of work and analysis by looking at how trade rules were upending North American energy markets. washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…
"If Stanley Cohen once defined the social phenomenon of the “moral panic”, one is tempted to say that what the IRA has unleashed in Europe is a “policy panic”: an echo-chamber of zealous & intense responses to a perceived existential threat." - @adam_tooze adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-18…
And here's an oped length dive from @adam_tooze on the Transatlantic politics of the IRA: An arms race on industrial policy is the last thing Europe needs. ft.com/content/c609f8…
The timing of the uproar is indeed odd, as Adam notes.
Wow. The EU is not stopping at criticizing the electric vehicle tax credit. Instead they are taking aim at vast swaths of the climate provisions of the IRA.
Underlines the importance of @MESandbu's entreaty in today's @FT. The EU needs to decide whether it wants the decarbonization agenda the US can actually deliver, or no decarbonization agenda at all.
Ensure a livable planet, or cling to neoliberalism?
Excellent @MESandbu column imploring Europe to look to the future of climate-trade cooperation with the US, instead of looking backwards to a past mode that severed the two topics. ft.com/content/a1b97d…