A South African trade minister has voiced opposition to the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) at a recent meeting of the BRICS bloc of nations in Russia, according to reporting from Bloomberg.
The EU’s CBAM, which imposes levies on goods which have manufacturing processes resulting in higher carbon emissions than equivalent goods in the bloc, has sparked a response from the African nation, which argues that the measure breaks WTO rules. South Africa has said it will seek talks with the EU on the changes.
‘Prejudicing the developing world’
The country’s trade minister, Parks Tau, was at the recent meeting in Moscow to say that his fellow ministers were “united on the need to have the conversation about the reconsideration of CBAM”.
“Unilateral action on that front is unhelpful. We cannot just wake up one day and say ‘OK, these ones are not coming in’, because you are totally prejudicing the developing world.”
Building BRICS
The BRICS group – which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE – and its importance could grow according to further reporting from Bloomberg, which states that Malaysia has been backed by Russia to join.
Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim spoke following positive discussions with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to say:
“This potential membership holds substantial promise for both nations and underscores our commitment to fostering robust international collaboration.”
It could mark a broader development in cooperation between the rapidly-developing Asian economy and Russia, and Anwar added:
“We also explored avenues to enhance bilateral cooperation, with a particular focus on strengthening ties in key areas such as investment and trade, science and technology, agriculture, defence and military, education, and tourism and culture.”
Malaysia is not the only South East Asian nation looking to join the bloc. In May, Thailand announced its intention to join despite its current status as a treaty ally of the US, which has in recent years experienced rising tensions with China and Russia, the largest countries in BRICS.
Opposing ‘complex restrictions’
Trade ministers from across BRICS have also agreed to adopt shared positions on issues raised at the World Trade Organization (WTO), according to reporting by Eurasia Business News.
The countries belonging to the bloc agreed to a communique following the Moscow meeting arguing that the WTO should give more attention to the interests of its developing economy members, and sets out opposition to alleged anti-competitive measures on trade that would limit their development.
These measures include “increasingly complex restrictions that are imposed on individual companies [and which] affect the export of technology, access to ports and other modes of delivery, as well as payments”.
Judge dread
The Russian economy and trade minister, Ekaterina Mayorova, told Russian media outlet Kommersant that the core of the agreement was a common approach to reviving the work of the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism.
The mechanism has been suspended since the US began blocking the approval of new judges to the Appellate Body in 2019, which the organisation said was “grinding the dispute settlement system to a halt and throwing into doubt the WTO's role in enforcing multilateral trade rules”.
Resolving that issue is likely to be a continued focus of the organisation’s director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, should she succeed in securing a second term in the role.
