A former EU director general for the bloc's climate action directorate defended its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, saying it's not designed to protect European heavy industry against imports from lower-cost economies.
Mara Lee
Mara Lee, Senior Editor, is a reporter for International Trade Today and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. She joined the Warren Communications News staff in early 2018, after covering health policy, Midwestern Congressional delegations, and the Connecticut economy, insurance and manufacturing sectors for the Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper (established 1674). Before arriving in Washington D.C. to cover Congress in 2005, she worked in Ohio, where she witnessed fervent presidential campaigning every four years.
If a bill just introduced becomes law, importers of fossil fuels, refined petroleum products, petrochemicals, fertilizer, hydrogen, adipic acid, cement, iron and steel, aluminum, glass, pulp, paper, lime and gypsum products and ethanol would have to pay a duty at the border based on the carbon intensity of either the industry in the home country, the product, if a specific petition was made, or an economywide carbon intensity measure, if no reliable data is available by industry.
African and Brazilian participants at the U.N. Climate Change Conference complained that the EU's due diligence requirement to certify that commodities were not grown on deforested land in the tropics (see 2112030047 and 2307270041) is burdensome to small farmers in their countries.
China's stranglehold on minerals used in electric vehicle battery-making, and their head start on making quality, affordable EVs makes U.S. and European firms anxious, panelists said at a Georgetown Business School webinar on the future of auto value chains.
Two months away from the first reporting requirements for carbon intensity of certain imports into the EU, not only do many importers not understand how to comply, but even the customs authorities aren't ready, said Vassilis Akritidis, a partner at Crowell who offered a webinar on the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism last week.
A House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy and Regulatory Affairs hearing focused on the need for more domestic mining of critical minerals, but administration witnesses noted that imports -- and subsidizing processing of domestically mined minerals -- are just as essential to uninterrupted supply.
Asian countries in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and businesses that export to those countries had low expectations for IPEF, and trade experts said it will take years to see if IPEF will have any commercially meaningful outcomes.
An academic and journalists from England and Foreign Policy magazine agreed that President Joe Biden got more out of the meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping than Xi did.
The Senate voted 87-11 to approve a laddered temporary spending bill that will continue government appropriations at last fiscal year's level through Jan. 19 for some agencies and through Feb. 2 for others.
The leaders of the Senate Finance Committee introduced a bill that would require USDA and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to produce annual reports identifying the acts, policies or practices that create significant barriers to exports of U.S. fruits and vegetables or distort their own markets so that U.S. fruits, vegetables, nuts and flowers cannot be competitive.