Washington opens a file on CBAM: USTR asks US businesses what the border charge costs them
The Office of the US Trade Representative published a request for comments in the Federal Register on 8 October, asking US businesses how the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism affects their trade. Comments are due by 9 November through the regulations.gov portal, under docket USTR-2026-0661.
What USTR is asking
The notice poses four questions. What is CBAM's current effect on US producers, workers and exports, including costs, regulatory burden and access to the EU market? What would the proposed expansion to downstream products do? Does CBAM put US companies at a disadvantage against EU or third-country competitors? And should the US government take enforcement action in response to any injury CBAM causes?
That last question is the one to watch. The notice does not open a Section 301 investigation and creates no legal basis for tariffs on its own. USTR says the input will inform its continued engagement with the EU on CBAM. But an agency does not usually ask the public whether enforcement is appropriate unless the option is live, and law firms advising US clients are reading it that way.
Commenters are invited to give specifics: products, trade values, lost sales, job effects and company size. That is the kind of record an administration builds before acting.
The background
The United States has complained about CBAM before. In the August 2025 trade framework, the EU agreed to work towards additional flexibilities in how CBAM is implemented, without making specific concessions. USTR's 2026 National Trade Estimate report then listed its grievances: reporting burden, abrupt implementation, what it called punitive mark-ups in the default emissions values, verification bottlenecks and the planned downstream expansion.
The timing is pointed. The comment window closes while Parliament and Council are negotiating the downstream extension, which would pull hundreds of steel-intensive and aluminium-intensive product codes into scope from 2028. US exporters of those goods would feel the extension directly, and USTR has asked about it by name.
Pressure from two directions
CBAM now faces formal challenge from Russia, whose WTO panel we covered in September, and formal scrutiny from the United States. The two differ in kind. Russia is litigating; Washington is gathering evidence while it negotiates. Neither process changes an importer's obligations today, and the Commission has given no sign of slowing implementation. Certificate sales still open on 1 February 2027 and the first declarations still fall due on 30 September 2027.
What it means on this side of the Atlantic
For UK and EU businesses there is no immediate action. The risk is medium term: if Washington were to answer its own enforcement question with tariffs or a negotiated carve-out, the pressure on the EU to adjust CBAM's design would grow, and the downstream negotiation is where any flexibility would first show. Exporters selling into supply chains that cross the Atlantic should follow the docket, and anyone building CBAM compliance into contracts should avoid terms that assume the rules stand still.
The safer assumption is the one the evidence supports: CBAM is in force, its scope is more likely to grow than shrink, and verified emissions data remains the only reliable way to control what it costs.
CBAM-Assured trains businesses on both the EU and UK schemes and helps suppliers build the emissions data their customers now ask for; contact us if your goods cross any of these borders.