The Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement: A Reconciliation of Divergent Values in the Global Trading System
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THE TECHNICAL BARRIERS TO TRADE AGREEMENT: A
RECONCILIATION OF DIVERGENT VALUES IN THE GLOBAL
TRADING SYSTEM
SAMANTHA GAUL
INTRODUCTION
Over the past twenty years, the world has witnessed technology
advance at an exponential rate-undoubtedly altering the way that
societies function internally and the manner in which they relate to
others. And the age of innovation is just getting started. As one
scholar predicts, [i]n this and the next decade, we will begin to
make energy and food abundant, inexpensively purify and sanitize
water from any source, cure disease, and educate the world's
masses.1 If that premonition is true, then one can only assume that
globalization will continue to demand cooperation amongst the
world's masses, at least from those who want to survive, let alone
thrive. However, because the world's masses is a simple and tidied
reference to what is actually a messy amalgam of different stake-
holders, certain fundamental tensions are inherent to participation in
the international sphere.
In the context of multilateral trading, a historical tension exists
between economically oriented, laissez-faire, pro-trade concerns
and social, environmental, and health concerns.2 International trade
scholar Sungjoon Cho eloquently describes this tension as an inevi-
table phenomenon considering the multiplicity of values that individ-
uals, states, and institutions pursue.3 On the one hand, [p]eople
1. Vivek Wadhwa, Why I Believe That This Will Be the Most Innovative Decade in
History, FORBES (June 25, 2012, 7:00 AM),
http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/06/25/most-innovative-decade-in-history/.
2. See generally Sungjoon Cho, Linkage of Free Trade and Social Regulation: Moving
Beyond the Entropic Dilemma, 5 CHI. J. INT'L L. 625 (2005) (describing the glaring tension
between free trade and social regulation).
3. Id. at 626. For a general discussion, see Steve Charnovitz, Triangulating the World
Trade Organization, 96 AM. J. INTL L. 28, 29 (2002); see also Gabrielle Marceau, WTO Dispute
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The Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement: A Reconciliation of Divergent Values in the Global Trading System
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