Unpacking the Justice Dimensions of High-Tech Trade Securitization: A Perspective on Integrating International Trade Justice with Just Energy Transition Imperatives

Pranusha Kulkarni, Goa Institute of Management, India (India)

The escalating geopolitical competition surrounding semiconductors and critical minerals has led to the implementation of stringent export control trade policies, primarily coding the ontology of access to high end technology as a national security issue (Bown, 2020; Gupta et al., 2024). While these export control measures aim to secure technological supremacy and prevent military enhancement, their far-reaching climate justice consequences, particularly for vulnerable geographies prone to heightened risk of climate-induced damage, remain inadequately explored (H.-W. Liu & Lin, 2025; X. Liu et al., n.d.) Understanding these human- and just transition dimensions of high tech export controls, and the effects of climate diplomacy narrative that renewable energy is the panacea for climate change, is crucial as disruptions to global tech supply chains, and increased extraction of critical minerals without reducing consumption and/or encouraging degrowth policies, can lead to heightened climate strain and aggravate social injustice, esp on climate-vulnerable geographies like India. This necessitates an examination through the "just transition" framework of the ongoing high tech geopolitical tensions, albeit this framework has traditionally been applied to climate action only (Carley & Konisky, 2020; Heffron & McCauley, 2018). To address this critical theoretical lacuna, this conceptual paper proposes to historically examine the climate implications of high tech export control trade policies on just transition prospects in vulnerable geographies. This approach is uniquely suited to uncover the nuanced "how" and "why" behind trade policy impacts on just transition, focusing on impacts of climate tech and semiconductor-intensive climate innovations. This paper thus proposes a novel synthesis of international trade justice, export control policies, and just transition literatures, by reframing the “chip war”(Zhang & Zhu, 2023) issue as a just transition issue, thereby contributing to a novel transdisciplinary theoretical-analytical framework at the liminal space between trade and climate justices.