Moral-Based Trade II The European Parliament (EP) has passed a resolution calling for the inclusion of gender equality goals in free trade agreements. As WPI has noted in the past, the addition of labor and environmental obligations in trade agreements highlighted the risk of a slippery slope in adding externalities. Earlier, some EP members demanded that a trade agreement between the EU and India be conditioned on religious freedom. One opponent characterized such rules as colonialist. Indeed, many in Britain say that overly prescriptive rules from Brussels drove the Brexit decision. One can imagine how a gender requirement could work against the EU, which has three member states with restrictions on abortion, nine members disallowing fu...

TAGS – Europe, India, North America