Why the US and EU’s Green Steel Negotiations Matter: A Series

The summer of 2023 poses a significant test for negotiations between the United States and European Union over the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum (GASSA). If successful, these talks could establish the world’s first sectoral trade deal to lower carbon emissions, creating a promising precedent for rewriting the rules of trade in a post-neoliberal, pro-worker, pro-environment direction for other sectors of the global economy.

This set of essays takes stock of the GASSA talks, highlighting important considerations as both sides try to land a finished deal by October 2023. In “Responding to Critics of the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum,” the Roosevelt Institute’s Todd N. Tucker and Timothy Meyer (Duke University) address some of the concerns raised by European negotiators and policy analysts over the initial US negotiating proposals, and argue for optimism for attaining a high-ambition outcome. In “Bold Climate Action Means Seizing WTO Law’s ‘Policy Space,’” legal scholars J. Benton Heath (Temple University) & Timothy Meyer discuss ways to think about the intersection of the GASSA with the rules of the World Trade Organization, a negotiating priority for the EU. And in “The Development Promise of a Green Steel Deal,” social scientist Maha Rafi Atal (University of Glasgow) lays out how the US and EU can think about incorporating the “development dimension” and address the interests of developing countries as they continue to elaborate on the deal after October 2023.