UK To Introduce Carbon Tax on Steel Imports from 2027 (theguardian.com) 62
Imported raw materials such as steel and cement will incur a new carbon tax from 2027 under UK plans designed to support domestic producers and reduce emissions, but the government is facing criticism for not moving fast enough. From a report: The Treasury said the tax would help address the phenomenon of "carbon leakage," in which UK manufacturers are undercut on price by foreign rivals whose governments do not impose levies on businesses that emit a lot of carbon. The result is that emissions are simply displaced to other countries, while greener UK producers lose out because they have to pay carbon-related charges. The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said: "This levy will make sure carbon intensive products from overseas -- like steel and ceramics -- face a comparable carbon price to those produced in the UK, so that our decarbonisation efforts translate into reductions in global emissions. "This should give UK industry the confidence to invest in decarbonisation as the world transitions to net zero."
Doubling down on folly (Score:3, Insightful)
A true stroke of genius, as one would confidently expect from this UK government. Now imported steel and cement, and other products, will cost substantially more - pushing up the cost of construction.
Governments are essentially consumers of natural resources, which they more less destroy without much productive benefit. When a government introduces taxes and restrictions, the overall net effect is bound to be to harm the economy and make people poorer.
When the government thrashes around in its efforts to redeem its public image, the effect is to make matters still worse.
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It is a tax on living. Governments tax. That is what they do, and justify it by any means necessary.
Re:Doubling down on folly (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you prefer taxing income or pollution? I rather tax pollution by far.
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How else do you suggest we reduce greenhouse gases emissions if it's not by a market solution such as carbon tax and/or cap and trade?
By outlawing emissions?
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Let us know how you enjoy living in the 12th Century AD.
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are you saying that if the state collect its revenues by taxing pollution as opposed to work (income), we will be back to technology from the 12th century?
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Inspired by French farmers who've been spraying government buildings with liquid shit, Brits could dump all the concrete on 10 Downing.
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There are good taxes and bad taxes.
All taxes have the secondary effect of suppressing the thing or activity being taxed.
If you tax payroll, people work less.
If you tax cigarettes, people smoke less.
If you tax real estate, people spend less on housing and more on other things, like maybe vacations or a boat.
We should eliminate bad taxes like payroll (which are also regressive) and shift the tax base to GHG emissions, pollution, and congestion.
I'm not a big fan of taxing personal behavior such as smoking, dri
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All taxes should be 100% avoidable. Taxation is not a NATURAL act, it is the use of force by the government.
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So you figure 7 billion people can return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle? Sorry but "no man is an island" and we have communal needs that can only be met by everyone chipping in whether they want to or not. I'm sure no one would voluntarily pay for things like healthcare, roads, schools, etc.
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I wasn't advocating it. I was explaining what it would take.
However, those most engaged in advocating climate change agenda HAVE proposed reducing the population to solve this problem. See the former Georgia Guidestones for reference.
Re:Doubling down on folly (Score:4, Informative)
Taxes are what it takes to run a modern country, get over it. The country you live in provides for your economy (rule of law), your legal system (rule of law), your infrastructure (them roads are not cheap). And when you get old and you have saved your pennies to augment your SS and Medicare, it prevents you from being a burden on your long suffering children. No children, good luck in old age, you are going to need it.
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A government can do one of 4 things to effect change: tax, subsidise, promote, ban. Those are the only levers they can manipulate to create a difference. Given that, if you choose to live somewhere where the populace as a whole has chosen to have some form of government, you've accepted that some level of taxation will exist.
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"I'm not a big fan of taxing personal behavior such as smoking, drinking, junk food, and gambling, but I'd still prefer that over taxing payrolls."
Then you are subsidizing these because of SS and Medicare. I suppose you could go full MAGA and remove those too. The Blue Haired will thank you for it.
Re:Doubling down on folly (Score:5, Insightful)
the overall net effect is bound to be to harm the economy and make people poorer
I suspect your model is too simple to rely on. While aggregate wealth might be reduced, wealth distribution could be improved: the value of steel workers that find employment to offset foreign supply will increase, for example.
In any case, the offshoring of environmental damage has been a key enabler of the regulatory nest feathering the Western establishment has indulged since the 1960's: outlaw this or that at home and import the same thing from some "underdeveloped" environmental hellhole. From that standpoint taxing imports is a moral good.
And yes, prices may increase. While this may initially appear to be a harm, there is a strong benefit: Western elites will no longer be able to behave as though their policies have no cost, outlawing things with no concern for the consequences because the direct economic impact is neatly avoided. Next on their list, for example, is PVC [phys.org].
Re:Doubling down on folly (Score:5, Insightful)
I've lost count of how many things our economies and their regulatory systems have us privatizing the profits while externalizing the costs. Then we make ongoing economic choices disregarding the external costs until they finally can't be ignored, at which point we socialize the expense so as not to take any of the profit back from those who made it.
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privatizing the profits while externalizing the costs
Exporting our industrial base is the single greatest policy to achieve this that we've ever perpetrated.
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"offshoring of environmental damage" another benefit of this that few in the West realize, illegal immigration. They are leaving their countries because they are Edens.
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Indeed. We're running a $1,700,000,000,000-2,000,000,000,000 (depending on which brand of financial gymnastics you prefer) federal deficit and no one can really explain why. No financial "crisis". No war. No pandemic. Yet we're borrowing and printing like it's 2008 and all the banks are about to fold. Even establishment mouth pieces [vox.com] appear to feel obligated to notice the clown-worldery at work here.
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There are definitely areas in the USA where some budget could be cut and adjustments to regulations made to free up money but really if America was a person looking for financial advice what they would get is more the old "you don't so much have a spending problem but an income problem"
USA has a tax-to-GDP ration of around 25% last I could find. The OECD average is closer to 33% and many countries push that closer to the 40% mark. That's not to say raising taxes is the silver bullet to all our fiscal prob
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Deficits do not exist. The government creates whatever money it needs to finance its operations. The taxes paid are just a sink to reduce the inevitable inflation and to try to convince people that fiat currency is worth more than toilet paper.
You'll be hard pressed to find any direct link between tax revenue and spending. But the false belief in this linkage is largely what holds the system together.
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The austerity is in not collecting enough taxes and stiffing education and anything else the Conservatives get their panties in wad over. When did they turn into whiny teenagers complaining they aren't getting their fair share of booty?
They're just copying the EU (Score:2)
Bet you think it's a great idea now, right?
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A true stroke of genius, as one would confidently expect from this UK government. Now imported steel and cement, and other products, will cost substantially more - pushing up the cost of construction.
If the UK is already taxing pollution from local steelmaking and cement, putting an equal tax on imported steel and cement from countries with worse pollution just levels the playing field. Otherwise, the UK is just subsidizing moving pollution offshore.
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Now imported steel and cement, and other products, will cost substantially more - pushing up the cost of construction.
We welcome you to the point. Carbon emissions are a function of consumption and economic activity. Maybe if things are more expensive there will be less activity. It's amazing how much we shit on the environment when we can do it for free.
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Paying the bills... (Score:2)
This doesn't reduce value or "make people poorer."
CO2, above what is consumed in the natural cycle, is PURE garbage. Right now, companies are dumping their trash inside your lungs and doing so for FREE.
This is already making people poorer, it is just hidden because, traditionally, it wasn't accounted for. The UK tariff is simply accounting for the value these companies are taking from everyone, quantifying it and requiring the manufacturers to actually pay it.
Seems pretty reasonable to me. I think everyo
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It's too prop up our domestic steel industry. It needs expensive upgrades to decarbonize.
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It's much worse than that. It effectively ensures that UK will never have an export industry in this field again, as this will ensure that investments that have any export potential at all will go abroad.
Because it's better to have a facility abroad and pay this tax, as this makes it competitive both in UK and abroad, than to have it in UK so it will only have a chance of being competitive in UK and nowhere else.
But Green cult behind these decisions has as its main aim destruction of human prosperity. This
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"Now imported steel and cement, and other products, will cost substantially more"
An actual capitalist would recognize that it's a cost that is incurred anyway, but it was externalized so the market couldn't account for it. Now that it will be internalized, the market can make correct decisions about what products to use.
Why do you hate markets?
Applies across the board (Score:1)
That same theory could apply to all sorts of regulations, so why stop at carbon? One of the reasons it is expensive to manufacture locally is pesky rules about not polluting the local environment or exposing workers to long-term health risks, or short-term for that matter. Why are we fine with https://youtu.be/TRhEPMbGEa0?t... [youtu.be] and https://youtu.be/a7U4zbz24HQ [youtu.be] being the result of shifting manufacturing offshore?
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That same theory could apply to all sorts of regulations, so why stop at carbon? One of the reasons it is expensive to manufacture locally is pesky rules about not polluting the local environment or exposing workers to long-term health risks, or short-term for that matter. Why are we fine with https://youtu.be/TRhEPMbGEa0?t... [youtu.be] and https://youtu.be/a7U4zbz24HQ [youtu.be] being the result of shifting manufacturing offshore?
That's a penetrating and insightful comment. Sadly, I'm all out of mod points.
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So, if the import has lower carbon than domestic.. (Score:2)
... They'll get a discount? No? Then they're just saying "We want it more expensive, period."
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It's about re-building the empire.
e.g. Australia sells its iron at mate's rates to the Brits who send back the steel, the middle men make a tidy profit and both countries achieve a 'win' in the name of carbon while furthering their geopolitical goals. c.f. the AUKUS submarine deal.
Re:So, if the import has lower carbon than domesti (Score:5, Informative)
... They'll get a discount? No?
Yes.
From the article we're discussing [theguardian.com]:
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It will be interesting to see how well these carbon accounting schemes work. Here in Washington State, they can't itemize the carbon taxes assessed on fuels because that would "confuse" the voters.
Just more inflation (Score:2)
Industry groups welcomed the plan but warned that the proposed start date of 2027 was too late.
I'm sure consumers are also eager to pay more hidden taxes more quickly. /s
stupid idea (Score:2)
Re:stupid idea (Score:4, Informative)
cant make everything out of plastic and wood
IKEA strongly disagrees with that statement. /s
Go back (Score:2)
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Certainly! They used that during the Dark Ages, and that seemed to work out well for everyone.
There *is a reason* things are as they are, and it has resulted in the safest/wealthiest/most secure/most comfortable standard of living that civilization has ever know. Trying to roll it back will *roll lots of other things back, too*.
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No, they won't. (Score:2)
My guess is that this tax will get "delayed" when the deadline for imposing the tax gets closer. Then when the new deadline gets close then it gets quietly dropped. This is how politics works today, there's a big announcement for some new effort to prevent global warming to come in the future and then as that future date becomes the present then the effort is quietly dropped.
There's videos on YouTube going back something like 40 or 50 years showing politicians promising to end the burning of fossil fuels
Yet another tax.. (Score:2)
Yet another tax that will be abused and only created to line the pockets of politicians and their benefactors.
ohjoy (Score:1)
What's the opposite of Empire? (Score:2)
China, Japan, & India... (Score:3)
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Wikipedia has some information from 2018, back then it was China, Russia and Japan. If you consider next export only, it was Russia, Japan and South Korea with Ukraine in 4th place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I expect the war in Ukraine has shifted the stats for both Russia and Ukraine so the situation in 2023 is likely to be different. Bu India is not in the top there either way.
Green protectionism (Score:2)
It may have a laudatory goal, but the end result is the same: vastly higher prices for UK residents and businesses now basically compelled to pay green premiums.
The positive side is that this will probably compel businesses and residents to do more renovations in lieu of new construction. Unfortunately, the way government is structured, this means a larger and larger segment of the populace will need subsidies to do even this, which will be financed by increasing taxes on the ever-more-squeezed middle clas
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