Last week, two more shiny new regulatory appliances started to roll off the EU’s legislative assembly line: a due diligence law making companies liable for environmental and human rights abuses in their supply chains and new rules for recycling plastic packaging.Europe might be struggling for long-term economic growth, but its regulatory productivity is unsurpassed. Brussels has also created a deforestation regulation to block the sale of commodities grown on recently cleared land and a carbon border adjustment mechanism compelling overseas exporters in effect to respect Europe’s emissions pricing system, and is devising a rule banning products made with forced labour.

You can add to this strict rules on EU food and agriculture, increasingly complex packaging and labelling requirements and tough regulations on personal data and artificial intelligence. The US’s annual report on trade barriers devotes 32 pages to listing its irritations with the EU, way ahead of everyone else except China. 

Traditionally, the US and other frustrated agricultural exporters such as Australia and New Zealand have decried such rules — including on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for soyabean and maize, growth hormone for beef and chemical washes for chicken meat — as protectionism driven by European producer interests. Many low and middle-income countries have also said provisions on labour and environmental standards in EU preferential trade agreements are disguised protectionism.