The carbon border adjustment and the exporters it hits
Carbon leakage appears on 28 recent papers and the EU's carbon border adjustment on a handful, with the topic fading (5 papers in the last quarter against about 8 per quarter before) just as the mechanism starts charging in 2026. Which exporters pay, do they clean up or divert trade, and does leakage actually fall?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 30 papers carry a carbon-leakage or border-carbon-adjustment keyword (24 in economics journals): "carbon leakage" on 28, "border carbon adjustment" on 4. Five were published in July–September 2026 against about 8 per quarter earlier. The keyword "CBAM" appears on 38 papers, but part of that count is an attention module in AI journals that shares the acronym.
Questions
- For steel, cement, aluminium and fertilizer exporters to the EU, how much of the charge falls on them, and do they lower prices, cut emissions or sell elsewhere?
- Do exporters ship their cleanest production to Europe and dirtier output to other markets, so that measured leakage falls while global emissions do not?
- Do trading partners respond with their own carbon prices, as the mechanism was designed to encourage?
Data that could help
EU import data by product and origin with CBAM declarations, exporters' plant-level emissions, and carbon pricing changes in partner countries.
Next step
Track EU imports of the covered goods by origin country before and after January 2026 and compare them with those countries' exports to other destinations.