oken election promise to revoke MFN status for China. A genuine commitment to environmental protection seemed lacking in the decision making process, underscoring the absence of a core policy for the environment. Such a core policy is necessary, because a policy driven by environmental concerns and applied in international transactions helps promote sustainable development in both developing and developed countries, opens the way to multilateralism, and ultimately promotes higher environmental standards. Given the catastrophic state of China’s environment, we recommend that the Chinese environmental crisis be given higher priority in the U.S. government’s dealings with China. We therefore make the following recommendations toward a credible and consistent U.S. foreign environmental policy. The United States Should Articulate a CoreForeign Environmental Policy We believe that there is a need for an overarching environmental policy that would add integrity to the U.S. stance on export and environmental standards. In the long run such a policy may foster sustainable development by encouraging more ecologically sound infrastructure projects in developing countries. There will be instances when even having such a policy in place will not be effective in preventing an environmentally damaging project from being implemented. In these cases, the policy is still valuable, because it sends a signal to the international community that the United States believes that there are minimum environmental standards that must be observed.Additionally, setting such a precedent provides aninvitation for multilateral action on an issue ofglobal magnitude. Such a signal may appear futilein the short run, but its impact on future international negotiations could be critical. Finally, it is also our belief that the United States should consider trade sanctions, if environmental degradation in one country has cross-border environmental or political co...
