6 January 2026 – Prices for key industrial metals such as nickel, aluminium, and copper rose again in Asia this Tuesday. LME nickel is just below the USD 18,000 mark. CBAM: Did the Commission subsequently introduce hidden cost traps? Some CO2 default values appear to point in that direction.
Prices for Nickel, Aluminium, and Copper Rise Again
Prices for key industrial metals rose again in Asia this Tuesday.
Copper prices on the SHFE increased by nearly 5%, while aluminium gained around 3.2%. Asian nickel prices rose by more than 4%.
LME Nickel Approaches the USD 18,000 Mark
At the start of trading on the European commodity exchange LME, all three industrial metals also continued to rise. Aluminium gained around 1%, copper 1.9%, and nickel approximately 3.6%.
LME nickel prices are now just below USD 18,000 per tonne. Since November 2025, nickel prices have therefore increased by more than USD 3,000 per tonne.
CBAM: Did the Commission Subsequently Introduce Hidden Cost Traps?
The rushed introduction of the European CO2 tax CBAM on 1 January 2026, combined with the publication of key European regulations, may have been used by the Commission to leave behind a number of costly pitfalls at the end of the year.
CO2 Default Values Adjusted Once Again?
In Brussels, several values were subsequently adjusted upward so drastically, or newly added, that these changes appear to have gone unnoticed even by the Member States.
Official French CBAM Values Deviate
Official French sources still state with regard to the CBAM tool provided by the Ministry for the Environment:
“La calculatrice utilise les valeurs adoptés par les Etats Membres et la Commission Européenne qui seront prochainement publiées au Journal Officiel de l’UE.”
“The calculator uses the values adopted by the Member States and the European Commission, which will be published shortly in the Official Journal of the EU. These values are applicable to imports in 2026.”
However, in some cases the values used in the official French CBAM calculator no longer correspond to those published by the Commission on 31 December 2025. In the cases known to us, it appears that CO2 emission values from other countries of origin were simply copied and applied, even though those countries have their own steel industries and primary steel production.
Is the Commission Seeking to Exert Pressure on Domestic Industry?
The Commission’s underlying objective appears relatively clear. While CBAM was initially conceived primarily as a market protection instrument, the use of in some cases unaffordable and highly unrealistic CO2 default values now seems intended to force domestic industry to exert pressure on its suppliers and to have actual CO2 emissions properly verified.
This approach would roughly correspond to the German VAT collection model.
It is possible that our assessment is incorrect. However, the discrepancy between the data used in the official French calculation model (based on agreed data) and the values published by the Commission on 31 December 2025 is substantial and supports this conclusion.
At the same time, there remains the possibility that the Commission has made a serious error and will have to correct the default values in the near future.
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