Comments on: China’s Trading Partners Cause China’s Pollution

By: DL

DL — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:01:15 +0000

We've heard this innocent victim game before...wasn't it Adam that blamed God for the fall when he said, "It was that woman You made for me?" Or was it Chris Dodd that said, "That evil AIG taking evil bonuses on the backs of my poor downtrodden overburdened taxpayers?" Or was it Obama saying, "That Bush -everything is his fault?" Sigh - the more things change the more they stay the same.

By: odograph

odograph — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:00:41 +0000

(The weird thing is, his comments do lead to a tariff idea, which I think is more in our favor than theirs. We can use them to cut the payroll taxes.)

By: odograph

odograph — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:57:54 +0000

No there is a method to it. It is about carbon footprints (or mercury footprints) and how to calculate them. If you total a nation's emissions and divide by it's population, that is one number, and it is fair in a sense. But it's unfair in another, for instance if anyone is using that type of number for china to say that some rice farmer actually emits as much as an urban dweller elsewhere in the world. If the toaster and hifi went to the urban dweller it was his carbon, from a lifestyle standpoint. Of course, if china were interested in Pigovian taxes on any kind of pollution (carbon or mercury) they could just assess it at the smokestack, charge the factory, who would in turn charge the exporter, who would charge the importer, who would charge the urban dweller. FWIW, I imagine the quote is "inside baseball" and relates to country-allocations of carbon in whatever legal scheme they are considering. If it is a "cap per country" then sure, I'd try to move it to the other guy's column.

By: charles austin

charles austin — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:29:23 +0000

Maybe he likes Smoot-Hawley. Who knows?

By: Brett

Brett — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:45:50 +0000

That always struck me as a way to get other countries to go along with a proposed US reduction on greenhouse gases. Just figure out what you want them to emit, then levy a tariff based on a pre-set per-unit value of each greenhouse gas emitted.

By: Pete Burgess

Pete Burgess — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:40:05 +0000

Jeffrey, take a look at this: http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/18/trade-war-mongering-carbon-tariffs/

By: Pete Burgess

Pete Burgess — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:06:52 +0000

Jeffrey, tariffs are nothing more than acts of punishment to influence behavior. Generally counter productive. Rather than forcing China to subscribe to a questionable crisis, why don't we improve our high cost manufacturing sector by passing The Fair Tax? Bring some of that manufacturing back home and impose a more face saving form of behavior modification.

By: Drew

Drew — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:00:28 +0000

Orwellian

By: Pete Burgess

Pete Burgess — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:51:06 +0000

"However, it does seem that Director Gao has happened upon a creative way of blaming China’s customers for the problems caused by China’s policies."

They must have been taking their cue from the Dems regarding the sub prime mortgage meltdown.

By: Jeffrey W. Baker

Jeffrey W. Baker — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:49:58 +0000

I've actually been advocating this for years. It makes no sense to have local environmental, social, and labor regulations when you export all your production to another country that lacks them. We should have tariffs on China and others to draw even with the costs imposed on our local producers, and to price in externalities like carbon emissions.