We therefore reject the best fit test as the governing test for the Category Rule and instead adopt an “any suitable category” test, which asks only if the category is reasonable. A selection is reasonable if there is a plausible argument that any of the resolution’s significant effects fit within the category. For the the purposes of this test, an effect is significant when it is not trivial or speculative. In adopting this test, we hope to free players from the formalism of the best fit test while also ensuring that the category chosen by the author at least partly reflects the text of the resolution.
Applying this test to the challenged resolution, we conclude that it violates the category rule. Although there is potentially a plausible argument that Clause 5 might fit within the legal reform category, which “[r]egulate[s] the legal industry, public and private, for access to justice for all,” by leading some nations to create a private right of action against law enforcement officers, the speculative effect of a single clause by itself is not enough to justify a category selection that otherwise finds no support in the text of the resolution.
I contend that the proposal's effect is "trivial or speculative" as its text creates no necessary effect that meets the definition of the Free Trade category. The proposal is submitted to the Free Trade category, which is described as follows in "General Assembly Proposal Categories" as contrasted to its opposite category:
Both affect Economic freedoms. "Free Trade" increases Economic freedoms while "Social Justice" reduces Economic freedoms. "Social Justice" increases government spending on welfare and targets living standards. Economic freedoms primarily discuss how much regulation there is on business/industry or how much government spending goes to helping poor/sick people. Total Economic freedom is Laissez-faire Capitalism. Zero Economic freedom is a completely government-controlled economy. Creating a Food and Drug Administration in all WA member nations, or creating a Securities and Exchange Commission in all WA member nations is imposing a mild form of Economic control, and therefore a mild reduction of Economic freedoms; you're imposing restrictions on what businesses and industries may do and you're moving away from a completely-uncontrolled Laissez-faire system.
It follows that a free trade resolution should decrease government regulation or control of economic activity. In the context of people and goods crossing borders, it should reduce trade barriers, such as tariffs or "behind-the-border" regulations that discriminate against imports, or reduce the weight of visa restrictions, or curb official practices that have the effect of reducing international business and tourist travel. In this sense the proposal does not fit the description of a Free Trade resolution as trade barriers and regulations are not reduced, they are simply encouraged to be enforced in a different place.
In Assembly debate it is furthermore claimed that pre-clearance would have the effect of reducing waiting time at border checkpoints. This appears to be the basis for its category, but the effect is "trivial or speculative" because it depends on nations taking further discretionary action that is not specified and does not necessarily follow from the proposal text.
A reduction in waiting time is only a possible by-product of the proposal, and not a necessary outcome. It requires more than just the implementation of the proposal's text, it requires a chain of additional steps by member states that may reasonably fail to have the effect or even be counterproductive. For instance, nothing in the text actually prevents waiting time at checkpoints from increasing as a result, if for instance, countries took the encouragement to increase pre-clearance and merely reassigned border control agents to the pre-clearance points, resulting in fewer counters open at normal at-the-border checkpoints. It would logically require more budget to create pre-clearance without reducing existing service. The proposal text creates no mandate that has a direct and general effect of reducing waiting time at border checkpoints, this effect is highly dependent on specific circumstances (travel patterns between two countries, infrastructure, etc.).
In conclusion, the proposal does not have effects that fit the "free trade" category as it does not reduce barriers to trade and commerce, and the primary claim that it does so by increasing the speed at which international trade and commerce regulations are enforced is at best trivial and speculative.
