[throwaway894345]

I don’t think we should subsidize anyone, neither China nor India, but only pointing out that a carbon tax doesn’t prevent us from doing so if we wanted to.

Ultimately I still don’t understand why you’re claiming that we depend on China and India to implement their own carbon taxes in order for us to be successful. If all wealthy countries implement a carbon tax with a border adjustment, China and India will either have to invest in greener tech and practices to compete in the wealthy first world market or be content in a less valuable market where pollution is allowed to be externalized.

> This is not accounting for the havoc it would wreak in international trade obviously, hurting China's exports is never hurting them alone, because trades not only go both ways, but also through; meaning depending on a lot of Chinese intermediary goods that we export affects US's GDP, and also worlds GDP.

Of course it’s going to hurt our economy. We’ve been living partly off of unsustainable environmental debt, and the whole point of a carbon tax is to reckon with that. Economic pain drives us toward greener solutions so we can enjoy a sustainable economy. The only “trick” to a carbon tax is deciding what the carbon tax rate should be at any moment in time to balance economic pain with necessary environmental goals. We should want to avoid an abruptly high carbon tax rate and prefer an initially low rate that rises gradually to allow our economies some time to invest in and implement green technologies, but waiting longer to implement the tax means the carbon tax rate will have to grow more steeply which translates to greater economic hardship.