The US will investigate global CO2 emissions from trade and manufacturing. Why
The US federal government will create a special task force to address global carbon emissions from trade and manufacturing.
The news was given by John Podesta, the new US climate envoy who will replace John Kerry.
In a speech at an event at Columbia University, Podesta called global trade “an elephant in the room… that is producing a lot of emissions” and went on to say that governments must leverage international economic systems for climate action .
To this end, the Climate and Trade Task Force was established to address the imperfections of current international trading systems and make them more climate-friendly, motivating emissions reductions around the world.
The task force will address issues such as carbon leakage, where high-emitting production moves from one country with strict emissions rules to another where the rules are weaker. What Podesta called “ carbon dumping ” will also be an area of focus for the new entity: when goods produced in a country with more lax restrictions on emissions end up being exported to a country with stricter climate rules.
By way of illustration, Podesta said: “Today, more than half of the world's aluminum is produced in China, where the average ton of aluminum produces 60% more emissions than the United States. This is a bad story for American workers who have lost their jobs and for American communities that have been hollowed out.” The official added that aluminum production globally is "dirtier than it needs to be."
In addition to seeking to reduce carbon leakage and dumping, “we will work closely with trading partners to develop standardized and authoritative ways of measuring embodied emissions, so that every country can exploit comparative advantages in clean production,” he said. said Podesta.
The task force will also accumulate and process emissions data that will be used as the basis for new climate and trade policies, the new US climate envoy also said.
The result will be a policy that, at least in theory, will discriminate in world trade on the basis of carbon emissions. Obviously this sword will be double-edged:
- China is developing an economy based on nuclear power plants and renewable sources, which risks further crowding out international competitors;
- the USA risks being cut off from more economically convenient supplies and therefore seeing a further inflationary push;
- there is a risk of damaging relations with increasingly internationally important countries such as India
An American-style CBAM risks being very counterproductive.
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The article The US will investigate global CO2 emissions from trade and production. Because it comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/gli-usa-andranno-ad-indagare-sulle-emissioni-globali-di-co2-derivanti-da-commercio-e-produzione-perche/ on Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:00:48 +0000.