Administration, WTO and APEC to Work Toward Liberalizing Trade in Environmental Sector
The White House will work towards World Trade Organization negotiations on tariff reductions on environmental goods and clean energy technologies as part of its Climate Action Plan, said the U.S. Trade Representative June 28. USTR said current tariffs on technologies such as solar and wind can be as high as 35 percent, adding to their cost of deployment. The WTO push will come on top of a U.S.-led Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum initiative to reduce tariffs on 54 environmental goods to five percent or less by 2015, USTR said (see 12092006). The APEC agreement can serve as a foundation for the WTO negotiations, it said.
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"Over the next year, we will work with interested WTO members towards negotiating an agreement to eliminate tariffs on environmental goods," said the USTR press release. "Our goal is to secure participation in this negotiation of countries that account for 90 percent of global trade in environmental goods, representing roughly $481 billion in annual environmental goods trade."
More information on the Presidential Climate Action Plan is (here).