TRADING THE GREEN FUTURE: STRATEGIC COMPETITION IN ENVIRONMENTAL GOODS

Abstract

The current geo-politics revolve around environment friendly goods. Countries strategic trade policy is a mix of competition, cooperation, climate commitments, building a strong network of supply chain management with access to technology and raw materials. Countries are competing to dominate green technology products announcing subsidies to domestic green industries. The objective of this paper is to assess trade in environment friendly goods. There is no universal consensus on a list to identify specific environment friendly products. However, there are various attempts to identify environment friendly goods, also popularly known as green goods. This paper uses a composite list of the APEC lists of environmental goods. It has 130 green goods at HS 6-digit Classification. The study tries to analyse comparative advantage of Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) as against China during a period from 2011 to 2024 using UNCOMTRADE database. The study This highlights China’s prime role in global green trade, with other economies making only incremental advances. The QUAD share declined from 10.07 percent to around 6–7 percent from 2011 to 2014. Japan showed slow but steady gains, while the USA and India remained marginal players. The study inferred India currently lacks revealed comparative advantage in any of the core environmental technology categories identified via APEC list. This suggests a limited presence or competitiveness in these green sectors. In contrast, countries like Japan and the US are competitively positioned in multiple environmental categories with high complexity.