The United States will give much greater emphasis to climate policy and environmental protection in its international trade policy. In global trade, the US wants to "turn the race to the bottom into a race to the top," said the new American trade envoy Katherine Tai.
She called agriculture and trade the key to every free trade agreement and emphasized that the US can be a global example for sustainable agriculture. “Our farmers can lead the world with innovative methods for carbon conservation,” she said.
The trade envoy of the Biden administration criticized the USMCA trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, concluded under President Trump, saying that the agreement falls far short of accounting for the costs of environmental pollution through trade.
The most glaring omission in that trade agreement is the failure to explicitly acknowledge climate change, an omission she suggested would not be made in the future. Similar criticism is voiced within the European Union regarding the European-South American Mercosur trade agreement.
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack recently presented plans to make carbon sequestration a standard agricultural practice for nature conservation. Vilsack will soon visit Brussels. Within the European Union, there are also increasing calls to give agriculture a greater role in climate and environmental policy.
Recently, the EU and the US have suspended their WTO trade dispute over Airbus subsidies, emphasizing that both trade blocs want to cooperate much more closely.