At the moment, there is a serious problem facing the world in global warming. The developed countries in the world are making moves to cut their emissions faster than the rest of the world.
While this is only right, given the historical emissions that developed countries have already released, carbon tariffs are still going to be necessary.
You might ask why?
Well it is simple. If a country was to put a 100% carbon tax on everything created within its borders, this would create a huge incentive for all companies within its borders to cut their emissions as much as possible. However, if this tax is not matched with a tariff that is of similar size then the financially prudent thing to do, would not be to cut carbon. Instead, the way to make the most money would be to move production out of the EU and then import.
It is true that this is not going to help countries making things for import in to EU, many of which are far poorer. We need to work with these countries so that they can still make products that are acceptable.
While unfortunate, if the west was just to stop manufacturing, this would be bad for poor countries, as it would increase the impact of climate change – and this is already expected to hit poorer countries harder anyway.