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Big win for Biden: Connecting Climate Goals to Industrial Goals
Connecting Climate Goals to Industrial Goals
Biden’s Green Steel Deal with the EU is a model for future progress—and it beats anything that came out of Glasgow.
by Robert Kuttner
November 16, 2021
On the eve of the Glasgow climate summit, the Biden administration concluded a stunning deal with the EU that uses government’s regulatory powers to marry industrial goals to climate goals.
The deal creates a club of nations committed to cleaner manufacturing technology and erects a border charge—a green tariff by another name—against countries that use dirty production. The charge is levied in precise proportion to how carbon-intensive the manufacturing process is.
The immediate industries covered are steel and aluminum, but the deal is a template for U.S.-EU collaboration to decarbonize production technologies in other famously dirty industries, such as chemicals, cement, paper, and aluminum. The deal is a triple win, in that it rewards domestic industry to the extent that industry cleans up its act. It also puts Biden squarely on the side of saving union jobs and bringing more jobs back to America. It is an industrial policy also aimed squarely at China, far and away the dirtiest steel producer.
Come to think of it, the deal is really a quadruple win, since it enabled Biden to end Trump’s poorly targeted trade war with the EU, on terms that both players can feel good about, helping to heal the breach between the U.S. and the EU generally. Under the Green Steel Deal, the European Union may export up to 3.3 million metric tons of steel annually into the United States duty-free. Shipments above that would have to pay the 25 percent tariff. Aluminum, which had been subjected to a similar tariff, now gets similar treatment.
The agreement places tariffs on products that are finished in Europe but use raw steel imported to Europe from China, Russia, or other countries. To qualify for the duty-free treatment, the steel must be made from start to finish in the European Union.
more...
https://prospect.org/environment/connecting-climate-goals-to-industrial-goals/