IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/wotrrv/v10y2011i04p497-525_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Carbon-related border tax adjustment: mitigating climate change or restricting international trade?

Author

Listed:
  • KAUFMANN, CHRISTINE
  • WEBER, ROLF H.

Abstract

Border tax adjustments in the form of carbon taxes on products from countries with lax environmental production standards or in the form of a required participation in an emissions allowances' trading system have become a heavily debated issue under WTO law. Such an adjustment might be permissible if energy taxes as indirect taxes are applied on inputs during the production process. Compliance with the Most Favoured Nation principle has less practical importance than the not-yet settled likeness discussion under the National Treatment principle. Consequently, since the compatibility of carbon-related border tax adjustment measures is partly contested, potential justifications such as the conservation of exhaustible national resources or the protection of health (Art. XX GATT) become relevant. The application of the necessity and proportionality test requires that carbon measures are tailored so as to substantially contribute to the achievement of environmental objectives and do not create any arbitrary or unjustified discrimination.

Suggested Citation

  • Kaufmann, Christine & Weber, Rolf H., 2011. "Carbon-related border tax adjustment: mitigating climate change or restricting international trade?," World Trade Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(4), pages 497-525, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:wotrrv:v:10:y:2011:i:04:p:497-525_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1474745611000292/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Overland, Indra & Sabyrbekov, Rahat, 2022. "Know your opponent: Which countries might fight the European carbon border adjustment mechanism?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    2. Thom Brooks, 2015. "Climate change justice through taxation?," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 133(3), pages 419-426, December.
    3. Gary D. Libecap, 2014. "Addressing Global Environmental Externalities: Transaction Costs Considerations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(2), pages 424-479, June.
    4. Gary D. Libecap, 2013. "Addressing Global Environmental Externalities: Transaction Costs Considerations," NBER Working Papers 19501, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Sakai, Marco & Barrett, John, 2016. "Border carbon adjustments: Addressing emissions embodied in trade," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 102-110.
    6. Simola, Heli, 2020. "CO2 emissions embodied in EU-China trade and carbon border tax," BOFIT Policy Briefs 4/2020, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    7. Holzer, Kateryna & Karapinar, Baris, 2012. "Legal Implications of the Use of Export Taxes in Addressing Carbon Leakage: Competing Border Adjustment Measures," Papers 215, World Trade Institute.
    8. Jingzhi Zhu & Yuhuan Zhao & Lu Zheng, 2024. "The Impact of the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism on China’s Exports to the EU," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(2), pages 1-18, January.
    9. Rolf Weber, 2015. "Border Tax adjustment – legal perspective," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 133(3), pages 407-417, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:wotrrv:v:10:y:2011:i:04:p:497-525_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/wtr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.