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I'm no environmental scientist but, isn't the point of a carbon tax to get polluters to pollute less? What's the point of it if big polluters get a pass anyway?
That was my first response too, but on second thought, this may be a good balance between keeping European industry strong and green incentives:
European heavy industry isn't doing great overall. This is partly their own fault: lobbying has focused on keeping grey tech alive instead of enabling a green transition, but also largely because of high wages and regulation in Europe.
We need to push European heavy industry through the energy transition, not into bankruptcy. I'd rather do the energy transition a little slower than be completely dependent on American and Chinese companies for steel, aluminium, etc.
And I've been arrested at many climate protests, so don't tell me I don't care enough about the climate!
Is there a carbon tax on imports then?
Otherwise they could technically reimport the steel and save the tax.
Yes, it's called CBAM and it's the most beautiful tax I've ever seen:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Mechanism
Your explanation makes sense. I agree I don't want to be reliant on American and Chinese metal, as long as we're careful to not slow down the energy transition too much.
Then again, I'm no expert.
I hope they won't make a permanent except though, at some point we will need China and the US to move in the same direction if we want to actually make a difference. But at least China is going all-in on EV and solar power technology.
There's hope for China. The US might artificially prop up fossil fuels even once uneconomical at this point.
A permanent exception may actually be OK: China is much further along in the energy transition and the CCP are not doing that out of the kindness of their genocidal hearts: economic forces make electrification inevitable, as we can already see with EVs.
Also, the European market is big enough to have global impact, even if our rules aren't matched by other world powers eventually.