China, India, Russia reject EU's carbon tariff as 'punitive measure'
cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10876353
The BRICS countries, including China, India, and Russia, have opposed the introduction of the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). They called it a punitive measure.
The comments come from the 12th BRICS Environment and Climate Ministers’ Meeting, held under India’s chairship in New Delhi.
BRICS includes the following countries: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the UAE. However, Saudi Arabia has not attended the meeting.
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“We oppose unilateral, punitive, discriminatory and protectionist measures that are not in line with international law, such as carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAM),” according to the joint statement of the ministers.
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CBAM entered into force on January 1. Since the beginning of this year, firms in the EU that import aluminium, cement, electricity, iron and steel, hydrogen and fertilisers from non-EU countries are obliged to pay a carbon price under CBAM.
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During the CBAM reporting phase, firms producing high-emission steel reduced their exports to the EU. At the same time, lower-emission businesses maintained their export volumes, according to the June 2026 analysis by Nature Climate Change.
The reporting phase started in October 2023 and ended in December 2025.
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The CBAM aims to protect European businesses against cheaper goods from economies outside the EU with lower environmental standards that lack carbon taxation.
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https://balkangreenenergynews.com/china-india-russia-reject-cbam-as-punitive-measure/Open linkView original on scribe.disroot.org
3 replies
Ah, so it's working. Great then, please continue.
I don't think that the goal is to punish for something. It's to internalize a negative externality---to account for carbon emissions in price information.
If, say, Russia invaded Ukraine and in response, the EU threatened and then did impose sanctions, that's punitive. There was an action, one wants to deter that action, one does something, anything, that is unpleasant to deter future examples of this.
The idea---at least the stated one, if I recall the purpose of CBAM---is to take into account any harm that carbon emissions do.
If a product's production has some side effect and that is not reflected in its price, then there is an externality. In the case of carbon emissions, that'a a negative externality. Externalities lead to market failure, where a market does not allocate resources with economic efficiency.
The way you normally deal with externalities is to internalize them, to impose a fee to create a higher price for negative externalities and to subsidize to create a lower fee for positive externalities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
For that to work, you cannot just pass a domestic law, or you just shift production abroad and you still get consumers in the EU market making purchasing decisions that are inefficient, lead to more carbon emissions than would be optimal. CBAM imposes that tax on imports whose production involves emissions of carbon dioxide.
Like, the purpose is to expose price information about those negative effects to consumers in the EU market for imports, so that it doesn't just reflect negative effects feom domestic production. You need that for the EU market to operate efficiently.