The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) puts a carbon price on specific imported goods, intended to match the carbon cost EU-based producers already pay under the EU ETS, so that imported goods do not have an unfair carbon-cost advantage over EU-made equivalents. It currently covers a defined list of carbon-intensive categories — iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilizers, hydrogen and electricity — not general manufactured or consumer goods.
For most importers bringing in standard consumer goods, electronics, apparel or furniture from China, CBAM simply does not apply — it is easy to over-worry about this regulation if a product category is not actually on the covered list, and worth confirming the current list rather than assuming broad applicability.
For importers who do bring in covered categories — steel components, aluminium parts, or products where steel or aluminium make up a declared share of an otherwise-finished good in certain cases — CBAM requires reporting embedded emissions data from the supplier, and eventually (once the mechanism's full financial phase is active) purchasing CBAM certificates corresponding to those emissions.
The practical step for anyone importing covered materials is requesting embedded-emissions data from Chinese suppliers as a standard part of the purchase order process now, since that data becomes a customs-adjacent compliance requirement rather than optional reporting once the relevant CBAM phase takes full effect.