Border carbon adjustment and trade retaliation: What would be the cost for the European Union?

Unilateral climate policy, such as carbon pricing, represents an additional cost to the economy, especially to energy-intensive industrial sectors, as well as those exposed to international competition. A border carbon adjustment (BCA) is often presented as an attractive policy option for countries that wish to go ahead without waiting for a global climate agreement. We used the computable general equilibrium model MIRAGE to simulate the impact of the introduction of a BCA on imports of energy-intensive products in EU and EFTA countries and to evaluate the exports their main trade partners would lose. Given that a BCA is a trade measure, it might cause disputes at the World Trade Organization (WTO). If the BCA is considered illegal, the losses suffered by some partners may justify trade retaliations. At that point, it would be likely that prohibitive retaliatory tariffs target sensitive products in the EU, which are often related to the European agricultural sector. These trade measures would limit the drop in production in the energy-intensive and trade-exposed (EITE) sectors, but at the expense of the other sectors. Nevertheless, neither the BCA nor retaliation would have sizeable impacts on real income or GDP in the EU or on the retaliators, while leading to a small decrease in global emissions. •A border carbon adjustment in the EU would imply export losses for its partners.•The export losses could range from 17m (Brazil) to 1.4bn (USA) dollars in 2015.•Ensuing trade retaliation could decrease EU agri-food exports by 3 bn USD.•Other European sectors would be penalized by the BCA and trade retaliation.•Alternative policy options change sectoral results but are neutral for consumers.