Comments on: Rep. Dingell Insists He’s for Carbon Tax

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By: Dan Rosenblum

Dan Rosenblum — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 15:37:31 +0000

One way to avoid a GATT issue is to negotiate an international response to climate change that includes a carbon tax. If the United States were to lead the way instead of doing its best to block progress , the chances of an international agreement would be dramatically improved.

By: Sylvester Johnson

Sylvester Johnson — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:08:13 +0000

Thanks for your considered reply. A professor of political science wants me to give a presentation to his class, but needs to know about GATT undermining the tariff adjustment-or should we call it a border tax adjustment for legal reasons?
From your “Border Adjustments” page, it appears that the tariff would likely hold, but would not be 100% guaranteed to be robust against a challenge.
In particular, “it is not clear if an import tax could vary based on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted during a good’s production — WTO rules would have to be interpreted in a way that considers products not to be ‘like’ each other based on their carbon footprints.” Seeking a special interpretaion may be problematic?
On the other hand,
“even if “border adjustment” would not be permitted for process-based measures such as a domestic, US carbon tax, regulation or cap-and-trade system, and/or such “border adjustment” would be found to be discriminatory, the resulting GATT violation may still be justified by the environmental exceptions in GATT Article XX (Section VI).”
Seems like it would be preferable not to provoke a GATT violation in the first place.

By: Dan Rosenblum

Dan Rosenblum — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:09:28 +0000

Good points. It may be possible to impose border tax adjustments to reduce or eliminate international competitiveness issues and the border tax adjustments will raise GATT concerns which we believe can be overcome. We begin to address the points in our discussion of border tax adjustments on our "Issues" page. We intend to address the issue more thoroughly in the future.

By: Sylvester Johnson

Sylvester Johnson — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:22:39 +0000

To maintain an even international playing field, a tariff could be levied on products imported from countries without a C tax or cap-trade. However, wouldn’t GATT be invoked to strike down such a tariff?