Stainless Espresso on Sunday with a look at the European Union’s desire for unfair competitive advantages with a 6-month halt to all tariffs with the United States. And the Chinese government’s opposition to the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which we had already predicted and expected.
Unfair competitive advantage: EU proposes six-month tariff freeze with US
The European Union has proposed that it and the United States suspend tariffs on billions of dollars of imports for six months, EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis was quoted as saying by Germany’s Der Spiegel on Saturday.
This is said to involve not only the suspension of tariffs on aircraft, but a general suspension on all goods and services.
But what does this have to do with steel?
This proposal is clearly an unfair competitive advantage for the European and American steel industries. The American steel industry is largely owned by European conglomerates. And now already, associations of the EU downstream industry have repeatedly complained that thousands of tons of steel are still being exported to the United States, despite steel shortages, but which would be urgently needed in Europe.
“By suspending tariffs only on a bilateral level, the result is exactly what the European Commission constantly rants other countries for: Unfair and market-distorting competitive conditions,” said Thorsten Gerber, CEO of Gerber Group on the proposal by EU trade chief Vladis Dombrovskis.
“The fact that they are not proposing a general suspension of tariffs here with cooperative trading partners, such as China or Indonesia, in order to get the global economy back on track is of course politically motivated. In the end, this one-sidedness harms the European Union as a whole,” Thorsten Gerber continues.
Why only the United States, of all countries, was asked and not, for example, the most important European trading partner, China, is also not really clear. But the Chinese government is already annoyed about the attitude of the EU towards it anyway.
Source: yahoo.com
Chinese president criticizes EU border carbon tax in phone call with Macron and Merkel
Chinese President Xi Jinping sharply criticized the European Union’s plan for a carbon cap levy in a phone call with the leaders of France and Germany on Friday (April 16), state media reported.
Fight against climate change must not become geopolitical leverage
“The fight against climate change is a shared responsibility … and should not become a geopolitical bargaining chip or be used to attack other countries (or impose trade barriers),” Xi told France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel on Friday on the sidelines of a virtual climate summit, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Xi urges developed countries to help instead of excluding others
Xi also called on developed countries to “lead by example in reducing emissions” and help poorer nations cope with the consequences of the climate crisis by sharing technologies and increasing funding for green projects.
Source: euractiv.com
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