China follows on.
Baker et al. 20 — James A. Baker III, Honorary Chair of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988, former U.S. Secretary of State from 1989 to 1992., George P. Shultz, Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1972 to 1974, Former U.S. Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989, and Ted Halstead, Chair and CEO of the Climate Leadership Council, 2020 (“The Strategic Case for U.S. Climate Leadership,” Foreign Affairs, May/June, Available Online at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-04-13/strategic-case-us-climate-leadership, Accessed on 07-24-23)
An international climate alliance of this size would do more than just shape the rules of trade governing carbon-intensive goods. It would also partly determine which economies will dominate the energy industries of the future. Naturally, those economies inside the coalition would have the upper hand in any international competition. It would be in China’s strategic interest to join, rather than resist, a climate alliance whose price of membership was harmonizing its domestic carbon price with that of its trading partners. China is already experimenting with a domestic carbon price, so this idea is hardly far-fetched. Beijing, after all, would likely understand that it would enjoy greater energy security inside such an alliance than it would outside it.
In the meantime, climate policy does not need to become another source of conflict between China and the United States. In fact, the two great powers could use the climate as a means of cooperating to bring greater prosperity to the world. As China emerges on the world stage, both China and the United States would do well to focus on areas of mutual benefit, even as both sides position themselves for the future.