The EU and Trump declared a truce over digital taxes but now the US Threatens Retaliation Against the EU Over Proposed Carbon Tax.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Wilbur Ross compared the EU’s plans for a carbon tax to moves by several European countries to impose a digital services tax, which has angered US officials and caused Washington to threaten tariffs on EU products.
“Depending on what form the carbon tax takes, we will react to it – but if it is in its essence protectionist, like the digital taxes, we will react,” Mr Ross said.
Ms von der Leyen outlined last week how her flagship green deal programme would need to involve some carbon border regulations or taxes to ensure that the benefits of the programme were not offset by carbon embedded in imports. “There is no point in only reducing greenhouse gas emissions at home, if we increase the import of CO2 from abroad,” Ms von der Leyen said. “It is not only a climate issue; it is also an issue of fairness towards our businesses and our workers. We will protect them from unfair competition.”
During the Davos meetings, Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary, sparred with Christine Lagarde, the European Central Bank president, over ways to tackle climate change. Mr Mnuchin described a carbon tax as “a tax on hard working people.”
Not Just France
Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron were able to reach an agreement to postpone digital taxes but this issue is not up to France.
Fairness
In the name of “fairness” the EU will impose taxes and demand everyone else pay them too.
This is yet another example of why the UK did well to escape the clutches of EU bureaucrats.
In this case however, the EU proposes to act like Trump: Enforce sanctions on the whole world via its own idiocy, all in the name of its own definition of “fairness”.
Zero Tolerance for Carbon Leakage
How this will work is of course a mystery. And it imposes the harshest penalties on countries that do not yet have much infrastructure or industry, especially in Africa.
Bloomberg discussed the concept back in December with its report Wait Until Donald Trump Hears About the Carbon Border Tax.
“If necessary, if there is carbon leakage, we will have to think about a carbon border tax,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told the United Nations climate summit in Madrid this week.
Wrong Conclusion
Unfortunately, the article concluded: “Europe shouldn’t let itself be dissuaded. Plenty of smart people think carbon border taxes are necessary, including Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan, both former heads of the Federal Reserve. As the birthplace of the industrial revolution, the continent has a unique responsibility to curb planet-heating carbon emissions, including those embedded in goods consumed here but produced elsewhere.”
Zero Tolerance is the New Fair
Yeah, right.
The US benefited, then China benefitted, now Africa cannot. It’s all totally “fair” to demand zero new emissions.
Think about Africa for a second. Let’s force African nations who want to industrialize to use wind and solar despite the enormous costs of doing so.
Heaven forbid emerging countries resort to natural gas or the EU will tariff the hell out of them.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
I’ve noticed how often stories will mention a certain year range, like stating it has been the coldest since 1947, or the least amount of ice since 1965 or something.
Then you wonder why the specific date range?
And I recalled a small piece of science history when a comment was made how it has gotten hotter since 1850.
Anybody want to guess when the official end of the ‘Little Ice Age’ was?
That was also the time frame when satellites started to orbit and take temeratures from space. All measurements prior to that are suspect as inaccurate.
This EU nonsense is further evidence to support Armstrong’s call for the economic capital of the world to move East starting in 2032. Asia has not fallen hook-line-and-sinker for the gloBull warming propaganda. History repeats because the passions and ignorance of men & woman never changes.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/the-climate-change-al-gore-jennifer-morgans-fraud/
Staggering stupidity and on a cosmic scale. If you were a space traveler, just arrived in the local system, and tuned in to sample the “intelligent life form’s” dialogue, you’d find us furiously debating how to control an atmospheric trace gas that’s moved from 0.25% to 0.4%, with no evidence of negative impact on us, while studiously ignoring the blatantly obvious need to globally organize and prepare to deal with our budding pandemic.
I’m more than ever convinced that I have an answer to the Fermi Paradox: Why would they bother?
Actually I play mental games with myself sometime just to deal with this crap. One is where I really am from another world and looking at how stupid this civilization is.
Not .4%; you just upped the concentration by a factor of 10!
Without this grace gas there would be no plants and you would not be able to breath.
Without green house gases, it would -80 degrees at night and 160 degrees by day (Celsius!)
Leave it to those dastardly Germans, to try withholding this wondergas from both plants and us woefully underdressed beach bums….
Replacing it with particulate soot, dried up river deltas and no choice choice in transportation but to pile into densepacked railway carriages with the rest of Wuhan’s population instead….
Your alien race is likely to ask us all sorts of uncomfortable questions that are likely to cause us a bit of inner turmoil.
Like why do we expend ruinous amounts of resources on military spending, why do we persist with an archaic form of commerce in the capitalist system, why don’t we have universal basic income and social welfare systems, universal medicare, why do we have national borders and so on.
And yes, co-ordinated responses anthropogenic global warming and pandemics.
I’ll end by saying that these aren’t necessarily my views, but I expect as the decades roll by you might see some of these things happen.
And what % of these bs taxes will go to cleaning up the environment?
This will be like making a donation to a charity with multi-million a year ceo’s.
What if US imposed the same on German imports manufactured using their COAL FIRED power stations and Rusdian Nat Gas? What about environmental damage of mining for battery chemicals?
There’s massive hypocrisy on this issue and certainly some EU protectionism as it will become ever harder to cope with competition from hungry developing nations.
Might this be a way to engender some inflation given monetary policy has failed to achieve that?
More to this than just carbon.
What about rebates if you have massive forests?
It becomes ridiculous.
President Warren will sign off on the largest tax increase in US history to avoid collapse of the federal government in 2021.The belief that you can borrow ( print) your way out of any fiscal problem will get real in a hurry when those govt checks stop,slowly then all of a sudden!
That whore can go cry in her beer with Hillary.