The Role of WTO in Sustainable Development Governance, Revisited

International legal mechanisms in trade dispute resolution, such as the instruments of the WTO, must now, more than ever, take into consideration a wider range of interests that may very well complicate procedural aspects of the rule of law in trade disputes. Institutions such as these must continue to adapt as new conditions and variables present themselves, responding to crossdisciplinary iterations of justice such as environmental or socioeconomic justice between state and non-state actors. To that end, revisiting the role of the WTO requires a re-examination of its governance role in sustainable development as it relates to international trade. More jurisprudential encounters between international trade policy and climate change policy would bring these two estranged fields into a more predictable and meaningful union. This paper provides a legal basis and economic rationale for the calculation of a dumping margin that accounts for high-emissions production methods, which provide a summative discount to cost with government support, herein labelled the “tCO2e/t-s Adjusted Dumping Margin”. This paper identifies anti-dumping measures with the carbon-adjusted dumping margin as an ideal tool for addressing the sustainable development challenges presented by the Chinese iron and steel industry, not only because of the proven macroeconomic and firm-level influences of anti-dumping measures on export-oriented firms that benefit from industrial policy (or a lack domestic regulation), but also because of its firmlevel impacts. In terms of the anticipated benefits for the Chinese iron and steel industry, one finds that should the proposed carbon-adjusted dumping margin be applied, the resultant anti-dumping duty imposed on steelmakers using high tCO2e/t-s blast furnace (BF) to basic oxygen furnace (BOF) steel casting processes will increase the ex-factory price up to the extent that it deviates unfairly from the average price of BF-BOF. This lays the road for more ambitious goals, such as minimum environmental standards of steel production set by the importing country imposed by ADMs