As world leaders continue their global climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, trade is emerging as a very contentious issue in the negotiations, holding the potential to derail any substantive deal that leaders had hoped would emerge from the conference.

At issue is the developed world’s desire to levy a border adjustment tax -what essentially amounts to a tariff – on manufactured imports from nations that resist greenhouse gas emission curbs. 

Developing nations have been steadfastly opposed to the idea, claiming that it is nothing more than a form of protectionism under the pretense of environmentalism and could be the ember needed to spark a trade war. 
 
“We will always oppose any practice of establishing trade barriers under the guise of protecting the global environment,” Yu Qingtai, China’s climate-change ambassador, said in an interview with Bloomberg News.  

Both the U.S. and European Union are under increasing pressure from labor unions, environmental groups and others to push hard for the right to levy border adjustment taxes on Third World goods, according to The New York Times, which they say would have the two-fold effect of ridding the environmental of tons of greenhouse gas emissions while also protecting American jobs. 
   
“A border measure would help the environment by preventing the export (or “leakage”) of efficient U.S. production to nations who produce their products with greater emissions. It also would help keep domestic manufacturers and manufacturing jobs in the United States,” Roxanne Brown, assistant legislative director of the United Steelworkers union writes at the AFL-CIO Now! Blog. 

Climate change legislation currently being considered in the U.S. includes a border adjustment tax, however, it would not be implemented until 2020, which proponents say give developing countries ample time to meet emission reduction standards.   

To ease the burden of developing nations as they convert to a more environmentally friendly economy, the U.S. has pledged $100 billion a year in public and private financing by 2010 to aid in the transition.   

“We’re running out of time,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a news conference, according to The Washington Post. “Without the accord, the opportunity to mobilize significant resources to assist developing countries with mitigation and adaptation will be lost.”

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