A global climate trade war is looming. Here’s how to avert it
- US and EU announcements of new tariffs and other restrictions on ‘dirty’ steel and aluminium could presage a climate-focused trade war
- China can help avoid this and boost the climate fight by pressing the WTO to take up the issue of overcapacity in the global steel industry
These experiments in linking trade to climate actions will not start immediately. The US and EU aim to introduce their new transatlantic climate trade restrictions by 2024. The EU mechanism will take effect in 2023.
The US and EU are already encouraging other like-minded countries to participate in their new international arrangement. The US, Canada and Japan are reportedly considering new trade-limiting domestic climate legislation akin to the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism.
The momentum for climate-related trade restrictions is gathering worldwide. So far, the developing countries whose exports and imports would be most affected by such measures seem to have mustered no strategy for dealing with them. China has denounced such measures but has not said what it will do about them.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, excess global steel capacity in 2020 reached 700 million tonnes. China accounts for about 57 per cent of global steel production. While Beijing can point to some actions it has taken to rationalise production, steel overcapacity is still an issue that unavoidably centres largely on China and its steel production subsidies.
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Unlike the G20 and OECD, the WTO can agree on rules that bind all 164 member countries. It is past time to confront this seemingly intractable trade issue in the WTO, where all steel-producing and steel-consuming countries can have an equal say.
China has consistently expressed its support for multilateralism in freeing trade and fighting climate change. It would do well to seize this opportunity to prove its commitment to multilateralism by urging negotiators to take up the issue of trade-limiting climate measures and the related issue of overcapacity in the global steel industry and strive for a negotiated solution.
In exchange for offering to negotiate multilaterally on these issues, China could request a global moratorium on the imposition of trade restrictions for climate reasons. It has nothing to lose and much to gain by making such an offer.
The US and EU would have little to lose by accepting it, with only a few months of delay in their current plans. As they are likewise committed to multilateral solutions, could the US and EU afford to turn down such an offer from China at the risk of all-out climate trade conflict?
James Bacchus is professor of global affairs at the University of Central Florida and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is a former chief judge for the World Trade Organization and a former member of the United States Congress. His latest book, Trade Links: New Rules for a New World, will be published in early 2022