Link to the full Interview

" More than ever before, trade and the rules of the trading system intersect with a broad array of other policies and issues-from investment and competition policy, to environmental, developmental, health, and labor standards. These often seem to be a world away from 'traditional' trade concerns as tariffs and quotas."

" For example, there is no powerful, funded, global environmental agency. There should be. Heavy, fresh and creative thinking must be done about the roles, functions, jurisdictions, obligations, management and mandates of all international institutions and how we deliver our services. This is where those not captured by process and bureaucracy can help the debate. I would welcome your views." 

" The WTO puts no restrictions on the power to create or enforce such laws (environmental laws). In fact, its basic charter says member countries can take any trade measures they like to "protect human, animal or plant health". All the WTO says is that members should not use trade as a weapon when other issues, such as the environment are at stake."

" From the point of view of international law, the World Trade Organization is perhaps the most advanced of our international institutions because it has binding judicial power. The NGOs that protested in Seattle did have a valid point about the WTO: its rules pay no attention whatsoever to important issues like the protection of the environment or labor standards. But the solution to this problem is not to destroy the WTO but to establish similarly binding rules regarding these issues. "

" The United States has not released any environmental law or health or safety law in order to comply with any WTO ruling" (She explained that where changes to US laws were made, this was to remove any discrimination in the treatment of foreign companies and US companies). "

" A Joint Effort to Address Trade and Environment is Needed. This challenge must be taken up jointly by trade, environment and development ministries. We can not isolate trade or environmental policy from the impacts of international debt, the need to alleviate poverty, the equitable imperative to transfer technology or the need to enhance the capacity of developing countries to face the challenges of sustainable development. It is Neither Fair Nor Reasonable to Expect the WTO to Shoulder All the Responsibility. "

" Trade and environment communities are not divided over objectives. We both want a strong, rules-based trading system as well as a strong and effective environmental system, and we both want the two systems to support one another. The question is how do we arrive at these objectives. We will not arrive there through unilateralism, through discriminatory actions and protectionism, with each nation free to impose its standards and priorities on the other following its own perceptions of the problem. On the contrary, we will only arrive at our shared objectives through consensus, through negotiations, by working towards a much broader vision of a rules-based international order where trade and the environment fit together as two key pieces of a much larger puzzle. "

" Recognizing that their relations in the field of trade and economic endeavour should be con-ducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, and expanding the production of and trade in goods and services, while allowing for the optimal use of the world's resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the environment and to enhance the means for doing so in a manner consistent with their respective needs and concerns at different levels of economic development. "

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