Climate change is a well-recognized common concern of humankind. On that basis, this chapter explores the implications of the Common Concern doctrine upon climate motivated rulemaking and implementation in the trade regime. The particular aspect of the climate change problem dealt with here is that of low-carbon technology diffusion. It is proposed that based on this doctrine, the prevalent narrative of trade and technology diffusion issues be reframed in a way that prioritizes the need for resolving existing market failures preventing new technologies from being adopted, especially those of high price, absence of incentives and lack of financing options. Going further, the chapter then closely analyses two potential trade measures – (i) carbon pricing with cross-border recycling of revenue for technology support, and (ii) better rates of official export credit support for low-carbon technologies. It is found that the doctrine of Common Concern, apart from being an excellent normative framing device, can aid better understanding of the WTO rules, and also inspire reforms thereof to facilitate diffusion of clean technologies.

This chapter examines efforts to establish new global rules to restrict export subsidies for coal-fired power plants, which are highly polluting and a major contributor to climate change. Government-backed export credit for coal power plants acts as a form of export subsidy, and thus promotes the expansion of such plants abroad. The US spearheaded multilateral negotiations within the context of the OECD Arrangement to prohibit the use of export credit for coal power plants. However, since China is not part of the Arrangement, it was not a participant in the negotiations or bound by the new disciplines created. China’s absence, I argue, weighed heavily over the negotiations and undermined efforts to construct an ambitious agreement. OECD exporters were extremely resistant to agree to restrict their use of export credit when China—the world’s largest supplier of export credit for overseas coal plants, accounting for nearly half of all export credit in this sector—would face no similar restraints on supporting its exports. Without China’s participation, the impact of the resulting agreement is severely limited. This case thus highlights the difficulty of building effective global trade rules today without the participation of China.

This chapter analyzes China’s impact on the global governance of export credit. For decades, the OECD Arrangement has been held up as a successful example of liberal trade governance, with its system of disciplines proving highly effective in preventing a destructive, competitive spiral of state subsidization via export credit. I show, however, that the rise of China has profoundly altered the landscape of export credit and disrupted its governance arrangements. China has emerged as the world’s largest provider of export credit, but China has refused to join the Arrangement and it has persistently thwarted efforts to negotiate a new set of international rules. China has little incentive to agree to disciplines on its use of export credit, which plays a central role in its development strategy. Despite considerable US pressure, China has refused to capitulate and subject itself to international disciplines that it views as fundamentally against its interests. China has shown that it has sufficient power to stand up to the US in defending its development interests. Yet the result, I argue, is that China’s rise is undermining the liberal regime for governing export credit by eroding the efficacy of existing disciplines and blocking efforts to construct new ones.