Kerry: US considering carbon import tax

The U.S. is looking at potentially adding costs to imports from countries that don’t put heavy taxes on polluters, climate envoy John Kerry said Tuesday. 

Kerry said that President Biden told officials to look at “what are the consequences, how do you do the pricing, what is the impact” of such a policy, according to The Associated Press. 

“But he wants to make sure we’ve thoroughly vetted it and thought about it as a matter of policy, particularly because our friends are doing so,” Kerry said. 

“But we do have some concerns about what the downstream impact might be, and we want to understand that fully before jumping on this,” the former secretary of State added. “Our preference would be that every country is joining in in a fair manner in its efforts to reduce emissions sufficiently, that we’re all paying the price of avoiding the consequences of the global climate crisis.”

Kerry’s comments come as he is traveling in Europe. The European Commission has proposed a “carbon border adjustment mechanism,” which it describes as a carbon price on certain imported goods. 

During his trip, Kerry tweeted a photo with Frans Timmermans, who leads the work on the European Green Deal, the European Union’s (EU) climate plan. 

“We welcome the EU’s new climate commitments of 55% greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2030,” he wrote. 

I appreciated meeting with my good friend @EU_Commission VP @TimmermansEU to discuss U.S.-EU cooperation. We welcome the EU’s new climate commitments of 55% greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2030. pic.twitter.com/UPrDrVwKH6

— Special Presidential Envoy John Kerry (@ClimateEnvoy) May 18, 2021