The Carbon Tariff Scam
European steel gets subsidised through 2034. Indian steel gets taxed from 2026.
The European Union has discovered how to tax poor countries for being poor whilst calling it climate policy. Brilliant, really. Takes a certain administrative genius.
CBAM, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, arrived in October 2023 wrapped in planetary emergency rhetoric. It taxes imports from countries lacking carbon pricing systems that match European standards. Steel from India. Cement from Egypt. Aluminium from South Africa. All suddenly require expensive certificates proving reduced emissions or face penalties at EU borders.
The justification glitters with virtue. Preventing carbon leakage. Levelling playing fields. Incentivising global decarbonisation. Protecting environmental integrity.
Strip the missionary language and the structure clarifies. European manufacturers gain protection from cheaper competition. Poor countries pay tariffs for lacking regulatory infrastructure they cannot afford. The EU collects €10-14 billion annually.
This is not climate policy. This is a shakedown with paperwork.
Europe built industrial wealth through two centuries of unrestricted emissions. No carbon taxes troubled Manchester’s mills or the Ruhr’s foundries. Coal burned freely. Steel poured without constraint. The atmospheric commons got used without payment or permission.
That wealth now funds the regulatory apparatus preventing others from industrialising the same way. The ladder gets pulled up precisely as the last European climbs through. Call it historical timing if coincidence comforts you.
CBAM demands emissions monitoring systems, verification frameworks, carbon pricing mechanisms. These requirements arrive with deadlines but without funding. Compliance costs exceed competitive margins. Smaller producers exit. European consulting firms profit handsomely selling mandatory services. The money flows north. Jobs disappear south.
Meanwhile, the EU lectures endlessly about international law and rules-based order. Except CBAM violates WTO agreements prohibiting border taxes that discriminate between identical products based on production location.
EU lawyers claim environmental exceptions. Except the exception requires necessity. Alternative approaches exist. The EU chooses the trade-restrictive option because it protects European industry.
The mechanism discriminates explicitly. Countries with EU-aligned carbon pricing face minimal charges. Countries without face maximum penalties. Penalising poverty is discrimination, not environmental policy.
European steel gets subsidised through 2034. Indian steel gets taxed from 2026. Same product. Different treatment. Based on geography and power.
The environmental benefit is theoretical. CBAM does not reduce global emissions. It relocates production from India to Poland, Egypt to Germany. The carbon releases regardless. Geography changes. Atmospheric chemistry does not.
What CBAM actually does: protects European jobs, generates EU revenue, maintains industrial advantage whilst claiming moral superiority.
Global South nations opposed CBAM uniformly. India, China, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia. The EU implemented anyway. No negotiation. No compromise. No consent required.
Taxation without representation troubled Europeans once. They revolted. Now they globalise it whilst calling it partnership.
The pattern is ancient. Imperial powers always found new extraction mechanisms. CBAM updates the model for the climate era.
Money flows north. Resources flow north. Technology stays north. Meanwhile southern nations get lectured about responsibility by the nations that caused the crisis whilst getting rich.
The Empire evolved. The extractions continue. The rhetoric improved.
International law applies to you. Climate responsibility means you pay. Rules-based order means we rule, you follow orders.
How perfectly European.