A Year On, the US-EU "CBAM Flexibilities" Pledge Still Hasn't Changed Anything for Importers

In August 2025, as part of the broader US-EU framework agreement on "reciprocal, fair and balanced trade," the European Commission made a specific promise about CBAM. Over a year later, with CBAM now well into its definitive period, it's worth asking plainly: what did that promise actually commit to, and has anything come of it?

What the joint statement actually says

The relevant text of the joint statement is narrower than the headlines it generated at the time. It reads: "Taking note of the US concerns related to treatment of US small and medium-sized businesses under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the European Commission, in addition to the recently agreed increase of the de minimis exception, commits to work to provide additional flexibilities in the CBAM implementation" [1].

Two things are worth separating out here. First, the "recently agreed increase of the de minimis exception" refers to the CBAM Omnibus simplification adopted in 2025, which raised the exemption threshold well before the trade framework was signed - that change was already happening independently of any US pressure. Second, the actual new commitment - "work to provide additional flexibilities" - is a promise to work toward something, not a specific policy change with a date, mechanism or measurable criteria attached.

The same joint statement separately addresses steel and aluminium overcapacity, where the US and EU "intend to consider the possibility to cooperate on ring-fencing their respective domestic markets... including through tariff-rate quota solutions" [1]. That is a distinct, non-CBAM commitment about market access - useful context, but not part of the CBAM pledge itself.

Why analysts called it "no sea change"

Trade policy analysts who reviewed the language at the time were skeptical it would produce much. A widely cited assessment from Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy concluded the pledge amounted to no substantive change: it lacks enforceable criteria, and EU officials have consistently maintained that CBAM is a domestic climate measure, not something subject to trade negotiation [2].

The analysis flagged a different kind of significance, however. By acknowledging US concerns at all, the EU granted Washington a form of "rhetorical validation" that had been denied to every other trading partner raising similar objections - including, notably, developing economies in the Global South that have long argued CBAM disadvantages them disproportionately [2]. That asymmetry creates its own risk: other trading partners now have a template for demanding comparable concessions, even where Brussels has previously and consistently declined to negotiate CBAM's substance bilaterally.

What's changed since - and what hasn't

As of September 2026, there is no evidence of a concrete, US-specific CBAM policy change stemming from the framework agreement. The de minimis threshold increase that the statement references was, as noted, already in motion through the Omnibus simplification process applicable to all trading partners, not a US-only carve-out. No separate US small-business exemption, phase-in schedule, or implementation flexibility distinct from the general EU rulebook has been enacted.

That is broadly consistent with everything else the EU has done on CBAM's external pressure points over the past year: it has faced - and not conceded ground on - WTO legality challenges from multiple countries, continued to apply the mechanism uniformly regardless of a supplier country's own carbon pricing arrangements (subject only to the carbon-price-deduction mechanism available to all origins), and pushed ahead with scope expansion rather than contraction.

What it means for importers of US-origin goods

If you import CBAM-covered steel, aluminium or other goods from the United States, the practical guidance is straightforward: plan around the rules that exist today, not the flexibilities that were promised. A political commitment to "work toward" something is not a compliance safe harbour, and nothing in the framework agreement suspends or modifies any current CBAM obligation for US-origin goods.

The more useful signal to track going forward is not the US pledge itself but whether it resurfaces as precedent in the current Parliament-Council trilogue on CBAM's downstream expansion, or in any future review of the mechanism's external relations provisions. If Washington does eventually secure something concrete, the analysts' warning suggests other trading partners will be quick to ask why they can't have the same.

Sources: [1] Joint Statement on a United States-European Union Framework on an Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair and Balanced Trade - European Commission [2] US-EU Trade Agreement: No Sea Change for CBAM, Yet - Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy