Berlin Global Dialogue: EU inviting disaster through carbon tax, says Piyush Goyal

Berlin: The EU is "inviting disaster" by imposing a carbon tax on its steel products, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said Thursday.

At the Berlin Global Dialogue, he also said the EU is "shooting" itself in the foot by bringing in more and more regulations, restrictions on themselves, and closing their borders, something which actually helped them become a developed set of nations. "You put a CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) on yourself. You put a 50% import duty to bring steel into your country. You're inviting disaster. Your cost of living will go up," he said.

He stated that through these battery of regulations, the EU is trying to voice an artificial situation onto themselves, trying to create boundaries into Europe, trying to bring in "absolutely ridiculous" at times standards or levels of protection to safeguard certain sectors, steel being one of them, and only hurting their own economy.


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"Now, imagine going forward, every infrastructure, whether it's a port or an airport or your autobahns in Germany or your expressways, your utilities, your water pipelines, you name the infrastructure with costlier steel, costlier aluminium, costlier cement, with all the overlay of CBAM and deforestation rules," he said.

He added that the EU has over 75 - 77 regulations. "We've lost count. You keep adding to your regulations, add to the burden of your industry, make yourself uncompetitive. And of course, in some sense, it'll also create non-tariff barriers for others to trade with you," Goya said.

Cautioning that the world is a reciprocal world now, Goyal said: "And I don't say that. Much bigger leaders are saying that. And in this reciprocal world, you bring in a regulation and stop some other country from working with you. They'll bring in two regulations, which will hurt your businesses."

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He added that at the end of the day, the cost of living in Europe will go up, business competitiveness will go down, and inflation will be high. "You will not be able to compete in global markets. Your auto industry is suffering that already. I think auto sales are down from Germany by 15-20% in the last decade or so," the minister said adding, "How will you be competitive in the future? You will ultimately outprice your industry".

He added that India would trade with countries such as Singapore, where there is no CBAM and deforestation. "I don't mind all these regulations. The more regulations you put onto yourself, the faster it will become difficult to sustain these kinds of costs," he said.