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Addressing the global challenge of malnutrition in all its forms will require policy measures to improve food environments, yet progress has been patchy and often slow, particularly for regulatory measures. International trade and investment agreements (TIAs) may limit governments' "policy space" for public health regulation. Constraints have been particularly apparent for public health measures targeting unhealthy commodities, including ultra-processed foods. Challenges and disputes regarding food environment regulation under TIAs (even if successfully defended) can entail significant drain of human and financial resources, and political capital. Lack of awareness or understanding of the implication of TIAs on policy space for regulation can contribute to regulatory chill and policy inertia. Governments lacking capacity to interpret their "legally available" policy space may want to err on the side of caution when there is perceived risk of a formal dispute—even if such threats are unfounded. This paper draws on analysis of literature, trade and investment dispute documentation, and data from inter-disciplinary expert interviews (n= 22) to present a new conceptual framework for the potential impacts of TIAs on policy space for regulating food environments. The analysis that underpins the framework focusses on the key policy domains of fiscal policies, front-of-pack nutrition labeling, restrictions on marketing to children, nutrient limits, and product bans. Analysis indicates that regulatory context and stakeholder influence, policy design, and mechanisms associated with TIA rules and provisions intersect in ways contributing to policy space outcomes. This new framework can provide a basis for rapidly assessing policy coherence between TIAs and food environment regulations in these domains. It can also be used to identify areas where further legal analysis would strengthen the development and defense of regulatory proposals. The framework may be applied to nutrition regulation more broadly, given the common themes that emerged across the different domains due to common interests of stakeholders, notably the food industry. It thus provides a basis for analyzing the political economy of regulation to address the commercial determinants of health in relation to unhealthy food and beverages.

BACKGROUND: Regulation of food environments is needed to address the global challenge of poor nutrition, yet policy inertia has been a problem. A common argument against regulation is potential conflict with binding commitments under international trade and investment agreements (TIAs). This study aimed to identify which actors and institutions, in different contexts, influence how TIAs are used to constrain policy space for improving food environments, and to describe their core beliefs, interests, resources and strategies, with the objective of informing strategic global action to preserve nutrition policy space. METHODS: We conducted a global stakeholder analysis applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework, based on existing academic literature and key informant interviews with international experts in trade and investment law and public health nutrition policy. RESULTS: We identified 12 types of actors who influence policy space in the food environment policy subsystem, relevant to TIAs. These actors hold various beliefs regarding the economic policy paradigm, the nature of obesity and dietary diseases as health problems, the role of government, and the role of industry in solving the health problem. We identified two primary competing coalitions: 1) a 'public health nutrition' coalition, which is overall supportive of and actively working to enact comprehensive food environment regulation; and 2) an 'industry and economic growth' focussed coalition, which places a higher priority on deregulation and is overall not supportive of comprehensive food environment regulation. The industry and economic growth coalition appears to be dominant, based on its relative power, resources and coordination. However, the public health nutrition coalition maintains influence through individual activism, collective lobbying and government pressure (e.g. by civil society), and expert knowledge generation. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis suggests that industry and economic growth-focussed coalitions are highly capable of leveraging ...