Environmental allies and trade competitors: a comparative analysis of US and EU governance models for the trade-and-climate nexus

This chapter compares the EU and US approaches to the trade-environment linkage, with a focus on climate action. It examines the potential synergies and conflicts between the two regulatory models to determine the ways in which transatlantic collaboration can maximize the role of the EU as a "good" global actor. This analysis reveals that the trade-environment nexus has recently undergone an enforcement turn that has shaped both trading powers' policy and their recent reliance on sectoral and plurisectoral initiatives like the Green Steel Deal or the Carbon Adjustment Border Mechanism. The chapter argues that for climate action to shift from a secondary trade linkage to a matrix governing all policy spheres, the environmental agenda of both US and EU trade officials will have to resist the political rewards of nationalist politics to find scalable but non-discriminatory instruments that pave the way to a global solution to a global crisis.