White House alters rules on imported gasoline

[MDOLAN <mdolan@citizen.org>]

  Thursday, August 21, 1997
  White House alters rules on imported gasoline
  
  Pollutants can equal domestic levels
  
  BY JOHN MAGGS
  JOURNAL OF COMMERCE STAFF
  
  WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration issued new pollution rules for     
  imported gasoline, complying with part of a World Trade Organization ruling 
  which
  found that U.S. Clean Air Act regulations discriminated against foreign 
  refiners.
  
  The new regulation allows foreign refiners more flexibility in meeting the 
  overall
  guidelines for reducing pollution-causing chemicals in conventional 
  gasoline, thus
  allowing imported gas to carry the same level of pollutants as U.S.-refined 
  gas.
  
  The regulation makes no changes to U.S. rules on cleaner-burning 
  "reformulated"
  gas, which also were found by the WTO to be discriminatory. The 
  reformulated gas
  rules are transitional, expiring at the end of 1997, and U.S. officials 
  decided there was no point in rewriting the rules if they would apply for 
  only six months.
  
  The WTO case was brought by Venezuela and Brazil, the two countries
  disadvantaged by the original, discriminatory regulation.
  
  The gasoline ruling was the first by the WTO, which was created in 1995 
  with the
  power to enforce trade decisions that had been voluntary under its 
  predecessor organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
  
  Environmentalists attacked the original decision as proof the WTO would 
  force the weakening of U.S. environmental laws, and the Clinton 
  administration was under
  some pressure to ignore the ruling. But flouting the decision would have 
  dealt a
  serious blow to the authority of the fledgling WTO, and the administration 
  eventually decided to implement part of it.
  
  The United States took 15 months to carry out that partial implementation, 
  and for
  the moment that length of time probably will be the minimum taken by any 
  nation to
  implement a ruling that it loses in the WTO.
  
  WTO rules provide that environmental rules, among other things, cannot be 
  used to
  discriminate against foreign producers and in favor of domestic producers.