- Interview with Michael Bloss on carbon border adjustment
- Wang Yi’s experiences setback in South Pacific
- Crackdown on Tiananmen vigil in Hong Kong
- Beijing opens schools
- VW marketing chief Sengpiehl to fix image in China
- China as Ukraine mediator?
- USA suspends solar tariffs for Southeast Asia
- Profile of new BDI Head Tanja Goenner
- Antonia Hmaidi joins Merics
- So To Speak: stupid egg
I hope our readers in China had a wonderful 端午节 (Dragon Boat Festival), while we in Europe enjoyed an extended Pentecost weekend. With a shorter week ahead of us, let’s get right to it:
China’s steel is a problem for Europe. First, it is produced with state subsidies and in a way that is bad for the climate, only to end up on the European market at knockdown prices. This has nothing to do with fair competition, and certainly not with protecting the environment. But the EU wants to do something about it.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, the EU Parliament will vote on a carbon border adjustment mechanism. What experts call CBAM is intended, among other things, to prevent price dumping of climate-damaging Chinese steel. This sounds like a punitive mechanism and will probably be perceived as such in Beijing. Speaking with Amelie Richter, Green European politician Michael Bloss explains why this targeted price increase for Chinese imports makes sense for climate policy.
Our second analysis focuses on Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s trip through the Pacific. In the past few days, Beijing’s chief diplomat visited eight island nations in ten days – even a hardened Chinese travel group would probably have reached its limits here. And things didn’t go smoothly for Wang Yi, either.
The small island nations such as Samoa, Fiji and Micronesia reacted surprisingly cold to Beijing’s wooing – and thus answered a question that German and European politicians are also asking themselves: What is the best way to approach China? Perhaps not only Beijing, but even Brussels and Berlin will learn from Wang Yi’s trip.
Michael Radunski
Interview
“China is a long way from effective carbon pricing”
Mr. Bloss, why does the EU need carbon border adjustment?
In the EU, we have a carbon pricing regime: the Emissions Trading System ETS. The industry will also be increasingly affected by its effects. We now fear that suppliers from outside the EU will enter our market with dumping prices, offering cheap but not climate-friendly steel. The price advantage of this less climate-conscious competition needs to be offset.
China has its own emissions trading system. Do you think the systems can become compatible at some point? After all, that would also simplify foreign trade.
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