Ahmad Lashkaripour(@ALashkaripour):A critical tension in global governance is that trade agreements raise CO2 emissions, and pricing those emissions would disrupt the balance of concessions the agreements are built on. But trade agreements also offer an opportunity. Leaving the WTO is costly; leaving the Paris Agreement is not. That gives trade agreements leverage that climate agreements always lacked. Our new NBER paper asks whether the WTO can use that leverage to sustain a carbon price. We show that it can: with simple amendments to its rules, the WTO could cut global emissions in half. 🧵Thread 1/

2026.10.07 14:06

A critical tension in global governance is that trade agreements raise CO2 emissions, and pricing those emissions would disrupt the balance of concessions the agreements are built on. But trade agreements also offer an opportunity. Leaving the WTO is costly; leaving the Paris Agreement is not. That gives trade agreements leverage that climate agreements always lacked. Our new NBER paper asks whether the WTO can use that leverage to sustain a carbon price. We show that it can: with simple amendments to its rules, the WTO could cut global emissions in half. 🧵Thread 1/