Global Trade, Sustainability and Social Justice: an interdisciplinary analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to examine the global trade system from a multidisciplinary perspective that allows the understanding of the environmental and social impacts caused by the theoretical and legal principles on which said system is based. To do this, theoretical foundations from ecological economics are used to argue that the economic process feeds on available energy and produces non-available energy. Subsequently, the principles of National Treatment and Most Favored Nation are analyzed as constructs that obscure entropic differences and historical inequalities between countries. Finally, the utilitarian notion of individual wellbeing is analized against the backdrop of the social and environmental impacts of consumption, greatly enabled by global trade. The text concludes that retructuring global trade is necessary to address the current environmental and social crises.