• 43 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • The EU is a massive car exporter and the car industry in Europe is not doing that great right now. That is due to European companies producing EVs in China and then bringing them into the EU. So the EU trying to force them to keep car factories open is just logical. Hence the probe and the targetted tariffs, based on the subsidies they recieve from the Chinese government.

    Also, the tarrifs I’m complaining about aren’t Carbon-related, nor imposed by China(where on earth did you even get that absurd idea?), but they would stack in an awful manner.

    The article you post under is literally called: “China Confronts Europe Over Climate-Based Trade Restrictions”. Also I have no idea, where I wrote anything about China imposing tariffs. Just that those are not fixed, but flexible based on certain criteria.



  • A lot of high income countries did not have their industrial revolution less then a century ago. That was a bit post WW1, so it was mainly Western Europe besides the Iberian peninsula, US, Canada and Australia, which were industrialized a century ago. Japan did really start to grow in 1960, as did Spain and Italy. South Korea went up in the 1980s. Many already have had peak per capita emissions some time ago. Then you have problems like South Africa and Russia, which both have high emissions, but are not that rich. Russias per capita emissions are above those of the EU since 1951 for example. Time is also a problem, as in countries have falling emissions and others have increased, so that needs to be included. Also technology changed. Things like solar, wind turbines, electric cars, even electric trains, nuclear power plants and so forth are well developed technologies today. That was not the case a century ago. Besides that global climate change and knowledge of human impacts of it, are relativly recent, it only started being a somewhat discussed political point in the 70s.

    Point is, that it is complex and there honestly should be a formular to determine each countries contribution and that should include new emissions. Depending on how it is calculated that can absolutly include China.


  • It really does not matter too much to the planet, if products consumed in the EU produce emissions in China or the EU. However the EU has well working emission trading sytem, which in the coming years, will make carbon intensive manufacturing all but impossible in the EU. That becomes useless, if companies just end up producing in China instead, using old fossil fuel based factories. So having a carbon tariff is a great option. If China indeed cares about the planet, then they can produce in a sustainable fashion and export with no carbon tariff to the EU. Also the from the EU carbon tariff is lowered by the cost of carbon in the producing country. So China can just increase their carbon price to meet the EU level.

    If China goes green, then the carbon tariff is zero. If Chinas carbon price is as high or higher then the EUs, then the carbon tariff is zero.

    As for cars there is the option for manufacturers to show how high Chinese subsidies are. If they do not get subsidies, then they do not have to pay tariffs. Btw the EU has a fossil fuel car phase out date in law, unlike China.

    China is the biggest emitter in the world. If they do not lower their emissions, which this clearly shows they have no intresst in doing, then we are all fucked.